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Talkhouse

As a writer-director, Cosmo Salovaara’s work has been nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Award, acquired by MUBI, and premiered at top tier festivals like Tribeca, Maryland and AFI Fest. His clients include Kate Spade, Refinery29, and Interview Magazine. In his digital series The Future is Then and Let Me Die a Nun, Salovaara employed high-stakes satire to respectively critique tech-industry gentrification and aggressive male courtship. His work aims to center underrepresented communities, while teasing the limits of popular gender and genre tropes. He is currently working on a feature about a cancelled man, and another about an anti-aging blood transfusion app called DRAWN. His scripts have participated in Fantasia&#8217;s Frontières Market and the Gotham&#8217;s U.S. Features in Progress. He participated in the New York Film Festival Artist Academy, and holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University.

Cosmo Salovaara

Film

SXSW ’24 Showcases an Industry in Flux

Brooklynn Prince is currently starring in the coming-of-age drama Little Wing, opposite Kelly Reilly and Brian Cox, which is now streaming on Paramount Plus. She had her breakout role aged six in Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, for which she won the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Young Performer. Her recent projects Neil Burger’s film The Marsh King’s Daughter for Lionsgate Films, alongside Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn, Elizabeth Banks’ crowd-pleasing hit Cocaine Bear, and the AppleTV+ series Home Before Dark. Brooklynn’s previous credits include starring in Settlers with Sofia Boutella and Jonny Lee Miller and The Turning, opposite Mackenzie Davis and Finn Wolfhard. and voicing roles in in Lord and Miller’s The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, Disney’s The One and Only Ivan, alongside Angelina Jolie, and The Angry Birds Movie 2.

Brooklynn Prince

Three Great Things: Brooklynn Prince

Graham Swon is an American producer and director. He has worked with many independent filmmakers, including Matías Piñeiro, Ted Fendt, Joanna Arnow and Ricky D’Ambrose. In 2016, he was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” His first film as a writer-director, The World is Full of Secrets, played in BAMCinemaFest in 2019 and was released by Kino Lorber. In 2023 he won the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award for his production of The Cathedral, and in 2024 was nominated from the Independent Spirit Producers Award. An Evening Song (for three voices), his second film as writer-director, <a href="https://movingimage.org/event/evening-song/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">screens on Sunday March 17</a> at First Look 2024 at the Museum of the Moving Image. (Photo by Vincent Courtois / Belfort Entrevues Film Festival.)

Graham Swon

Unconscious Possibilities: Dream-state Movies

Lío Mehiel is an actor, artist, and filmmaker. Lío made their feature film debut starring in Sundance 2023’s Mutt. Their critically acclaimed performance earned them the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award in Acting, making them the first trans actor to ever win the award. The film can currently be streamed on Netflix. Most recently, Lío returned to Sundance 2024, starring opposite Leslie Grace, Sasha Calle and Residente in In the Summers, which won the festival’s top honor of Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. As a filmmaker, Lío is a co-founder of Voyeur Productions. Their most recent short, Entre Amigxs, can now be seen on NOWNESS. Lío is currently the producer and creative director of the transgender sculpture collection, Ancient Futures/Angels. The works most recently showed at GUTS Gallery in London and can now be seen at <a href="https://www.charleston.org.uk/exhibition/duos-the-art-of-collaboration/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Charleston</a> in the UK. Their piece Arcade Amerikana was included in the list of 10 Best Immersive Shows in NYC by Time Out and Gothamist. (Photo by Soni Broman.)

Lío Mehiel

I’m Coming, or, I Am on My Way

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo&#8216;s new film as director, <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80991090" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Damsel</a>, the neo-feminist fairytale fantasy starring Millie Bobbie Brown, is out now on Netflix. His previous features include directed Intacto and 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to Danny Boyle&#8217;s 28 Days Later. His film Esposados was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 1996. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images, courtesy of Netflix.)

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Three Great Things: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Thomas Haden Church is currently starring in the feelgood movie <a href="https://roadsideattractions.com/filmography/accidentaltexan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Accidental Texan</a>, opposite Rudy Pankow, Carrie-Ann Moss and Bruce Dern, which will be in theaters from March 8. He was recently seen in Peacock’s series Twisted Metal, also starring Anthony Mackie, and in the independent break-out hit Peanut Butter Falcon, with Shia LeBeouf, Dakota Johnson and Bruce Dern. He starred opposite Sarah Jessica Parker in all three seasons of HBO’s Divorce, and had standout movie roles in William Friedkin’s critically acclaimed crime thriller Killer Joe, opposite Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsh, Juno Temple and Gina Gershon; the hit teen comedy Easy A, co-starring opposite Emma Stone, Amanda Bynes, Lisa Kudrow, Stanley Tucci, Penn Badgley and Patrica Clarkson; and Spider-Man 3, in which he played the villain Sandman, aka Flint Marko. In 2004, Church gave a career-defining performance opposite Paul Giamatti in Alexander Payne’s critically acclaimed Sideways, earning an Academy Award nomination, plus an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor. Church co-wrote and directed the film Rolling Kansas, which premiered as an official selection to the Sundance Film Festival in 2003. Church resides on his ranch in Texas. (Photo by Jalisco Wayne, courtesy Roadside Attractions.)

Thomas Haden Church

Three Great Things: Thomas Haden Church

Tehran-born, Australia-raised filmmaker Noora Niasari’s debut feature film, <a href="https://www.sonyclassics.com/film/shayda/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shayda</a>, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award, and is in theaters from March 1 through Sony Pictures Classics. The film, which stars Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Cannes Best Actress Winner for Holy Spider) and was executive produced by Cate Blanchett, is a drama about an Iranian mother living with her six-year-old daughter in an Australian women’s shelter, trying to start a new life away from her estranged husband. Shayda is Australia’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 2024 Academy Awards. (Photo by Keiran Watson-Bonnice.)

Noora Niasari

Sundance and Pistachio Soup

Patrick Forbes’ latest film, The Price of Truth, is playing this week at the <a href="https://prod5.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=369302~d5a11db3-b3ba-440c-a208-47197fa86ccd&amp;epguid=2cd910cc-5aa5-4eb1-bcb4-ce4c28f56d04&amp;" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sedona International Film Festival</a>. His previous documentary, <a href="https://greenwichentertainment.com/film/the-phantom/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Phantom</a>, a film about how the State of Texas knowingly sent an innocent man to his death and left a serial killer at large, is now streaming on Netflix. His career began as a very junior researcher on a BBC series, when he was arrested after discovering Britain had a (secret) spy satellite. At that moment, it was clear that documentaries offered a lot more excitement and interest than his previous career as an economist. He’s gone on to become one of Britain’s best documentary directors – winning the Best Director BAFTA for his Channel 4 series The Force, Best Series BAFTA for The National Trust (BBC), and having his documentary feature about Julian Assange, Wikileaks; Secrets &amp; Lies, premiere at SXSW, before being seen around the world.

Patrick Forbes

Paying The Price of Truth in Putin’s Russia

Eszter Balint is a singer-songwriter actor and violinist. She has released four albums, and has contributed vocals and/or violin to works by Michael Gira and Swans, John Lurie. Marc Ribot, and Tammy Faye Starlight. Eszter grew up as a child member of the avant-garde theater company Squat Theatre. She has appeared in starring and featured roles in films by Jim Jarmusch, Woody Allen, Steve Buscemi, Louis CK, and alongside David Bowie. She is currently developing a theatrical show, I Hate Memory!, featuring songs co-written by Stew (of Stew &amp; The Negro Problem and the Tony Award winning show Passing Strange. (Photo by Eric Schneider.)

Eszter Balint

Wake Up. The Century Has Moved On.

Greta Schiller launched her filmmaking career with Before Stonewall (1985), which won two Emmy Awards. In 2019, the film was re-released, ran in 65 cinemas, and was selected for the National Film Registry. Her other credits include the award-winning films Paris Was a Woman, International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Tiny &amp; Ruby: Hell Divin’ Women, Escape to Life, The Man Who Drove with Mandela, I Live at Ground Zero, No Dinosaurs in Heaven, The Marion Lake Story and Bones of Contention. Schiller holds a BFA in Film/Video and a Masters in Science Education from the City College of New York which awarded her the Townsend Harris Medal for Outstanding Contributions to her Field. Her newest film is The Land of Azaba (Kino Lorber 2020), which is premiering in the Vallodolid Film Festival this fall. She is founding director of <a href="http://www.jezebelproductions.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jezebel Productions</a>, a women’s production company since 1984.

Greta Schiller

New York City in the ’70s was a Wonderland

Susan Seidelman, a graduate of NYU Grad Film School, began her career in the 1980s when Smithereens became the first American independent film to be accepted into the Cannes Film Festival. Her next movie, Desperately Seeking Susan, starring Madonna and Rosanna Arquette, was a critical and commercial success. She has directed dozens of other films starring actors such as Meryl Streep, Brooke Shields, and Sally Field, as well as the first four episodes of Sex and the City. She lives in New Jersey.

Susan Seidelman

Three Great Things: Susan Seidelman

Jaime King is currently starring in the thriller Lights Out, opposite Frank Grillo, Mekhi Fifer, Dermot Mulroney and Scott Adkins. She made her debut in Daniel Waters&#8217; Happy Campers, then starred opposite Johnny Depp in Ted Demme&#8217;s Blow, opposite Ben Affleck in Michael Bay&#8217;s Pearl Harbor and was part of an all-star cast featuring Benicio Del Toro, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis and more in Robert Rodriguez&#8217;s Sin City. Her other major films include DJ Caruso&#8217;s Two for the Money, starring opposite Al Pacino and Matthew McConaughey, Frank Millers&#8217; The Spirit with Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson, and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, appearing opposite Joseph Gordon Levitt and Josh Brolin. On TV, she was a series regular on the CW show Hart of Dixie and recently starred in the critically acclaimed hit Netflix series series Black Summer.