Interviews

In Leap and Soar, director Denzel Vazquez crafts an intimate meditation on grief, memory, and emotional distance. Through restrained performances, poetic visuals, and moments of profound silence, the film explores the fragile bond between a mother and son struggling to reconnect after loss. In this interview with IndieWrap, Vazquez discusses the deeply personal inspirations behind the project, the influence of artists like Edward Hopper and Emmanuel Lubezki, and his desire to create a story that transcends language through pure emotion.

With Foreign Tongue, filmmaker Boris Mojsovski delivers a deeply original exploration of identity, belonging, and perception through the unlikely lens of Foreign Accent Syndrome. Blending comedy, magic realism, and emotional honesty, the film follows Kathy, a North American woman who suddenly wakes up speaking with a thick Bosnian accent — transforming her overnight into an outsider within her own world. In this conversation with IndieWrap, Mojsovski reflects on his own immigrant experience, the delicate balance between humour and heartbreak, and the poetic, deeply human questions at the heart of the film.

With BAAB, Nayla Al Khaja delivers her most intimate and uncompromising work to date. A psychological dark fantasy rooted in grief, sound, and Arab folklore, the film unfolds through the fractured inner world of a woman haunted by the loss of her twin sister. Rejecting linear storytelling in favor of atmosphere, silence, and sensory disorientation, BAAB becomes less a narrative than an experience — one that invites the viewer to step through a threshold where reality, memory, and myth collide.

Los Angeles–based producer Desmond Qi Hong Loh represents a new generation of filmmakers navigating storytelling across formats, cultures, and platforms. A graduate of California State University, Northridge’s Film Production program, Loh has built a body of work that moves fluidly between award-winning short films, high-performing vertical dramas, and global digital media.

More than twenty years after publishing The Poetic Repercussion, writer and filmmaker Mark Anthony Thomas returns to the words that shaped his earliest creative life—not to revisit them with nostalgia, but to translate them forward. In Need of Seawater, directed by Richard Yeagley, is the first chapter of a poetic documentary trilogy that transforms memory into movement, and poetry into a living, cinematic language.

Winner of the 2025 Goya Award for Best Documentary Short Film, Seeds From Kivu is not simply a documentary—it is an act of witness. Directed by Néstor López and Carlos Valle, the film takes viewers deep into eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where women who have survived extreme sexual violence seek healing at Panzi Hospital under the care of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege.

Divia, which had its world premiere at the 2025 Karlovy Vary Film Festival, is a haunting, meditative journey through Ukraine’s wounded landscapes—told entirely without dialogue. Produced by Ukrainian filmmaker and Los Angeles–based producer Polina Herman, the documentary explores the ecological devastation caused by war, while revealing moments of resilience slowly returning to the land.

After a powerful festival run, Catherine Argyrople’s Growing Pains has officially landed on Tubi. Inspired by her own journey as a childhood cancer survivor, Argyrople delivers an intimate story about friendship, identity, and the pressures young women face today. We caught up with the filmmaker to talk about healing through art, authentic representation, and the emotional road behind her debut feature.

Fresh off being named 2025 New Hampshire Filmmaker of the Year, writer-director Brad Courtemanche is stepping into his next ambitious project — What Only Cicadas See, a grounded near-future thriller that explores how technology mirrors human morality more than it defines it.

In All American, director Mark Andrew Altschul brings the spotlight to three remarkable young women breaking barriers in one of the most male-dominated sports — wrestling. Filmed over five years across New York City and beyond, the documentary follows Naomi, Jojo, and Arham, three high school athletes whose stories of perseverance, identity, and belonging transcend the mat.