The author of the book had a great line about your films: “Laughs are never free. There are always strings attached.” Can you speak about the humor in this film and its fine calibration, especially in its opening sequences?
Taika Waititi: I always thought that humor and comedy are very powerful tools and effective weapons against bullies and bigotry.
This is a somewhat personal film for you— and it’s your first feature. Can you discuss how you came to make this film?
Kathryn Ferguson: I grew up in Northern Ireland. My father, actually, was a huge fan of Sinéad’s in the late ’80’s, when The Lion and The Cobra came out
Your DP said that his collaboration with you is one of the most unique he’s had with a director.
Edward Berger: We’re both obsessed with precision and architecture in the film. It’s not haphazard and we don’t try to find the shot on set. It gives me true pleasure to set up a shot and in that shot, have every department create the illusion that this is reality.
The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of The Miseducation of Cameron Post. How did this project start? Desiree Akhavan: I was sent the book and I loved it. I really loved it. I gave it to my girlfriend at the time, who read it and loved it. And, […]
Your films feel so naturalistic— as though you just took your crew to a location and filmed what was going on there. But the reality is quite different, isn’t it?
Chloé Zhao: Well, the trick is to make the audience feel like we just showed up.
How did you decide to make these stories into a feature film?
Bonni Cohen: John and I are a married couple – we’ve been making films together for almost twenty years now. And we’ve done a lot of hard films.
When was it clear that there was enough here to make a compelling feature?
Amanda McBaine: I love the word clarity; it’s not something you really have until you premiere your film and you hope people respond.