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Q&A with Chloé Zhao and Mollye Asher

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Nomadland.

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. That we have not planned or manipulated the situation… but of course we did! And, you know, it’s not that different from a more traditional film: we start with a script, and the script gives us the parameters, so it’s a road movie… So the locations come first. And then we go from there.

Mollye Asher: After Chloé finalizes the script, we’ll know exactly what she needs. By that I mean, there will be specific places that Chloé knows for sure that she wants. For example, Wall Drug in South Dakota is a very famous place, and so we’ll go through that process of getting those locations. But then there are other things that Chloé and Josh, through their travels, are going to find as they’re location scouting. For instance, for the mechanic, Chloé and Josh drove around to a lot of different places until they found one that was interesting looking. And when they did that, they found this amazing character, Ken, who is in the film. So a lot of times the casting of locations is also casting the actors.  

I don’t believe in “locking” the script until the morning of the last day of the shoot

It’s fascinating that Fern was not in the book, and is so central to the film. How did you create her?

CZ: We divided the whole story by three: There’s a third from the book, a third from the lives of our previous films and our travels, and another third from Fran, really. Including locations as well— for instance, the redwoods, and the Pacific coast… those places were very dear to Fran. We knew from the start that Jessica Bruder [the author of the book] had captured such a unique time in America. Everything from Empire Nevada to work camping at Amazon to Bee Harvest Nebraska. It’s a very rich, rich world that she built. We needed to create a character that had a strong enough of an emotional arc to be able to take us through that kind of territory. And for us, to be able to very greedily include as much as we could from her book. And so we collaborated with Fran to create a character that’s sort of a version of Fran — the same way that the non-professional actors were going to play versions of themselves. So that’s sort of how Fern was created.

How did you crew this film? It must be a delicate task, given that you are placing non-actors alongside a master like Frances McDormand.

MA: We brought them with us on the road. And, you know, casting crew is something we’ve done on all of Chloé’s movies. It’s very important, because we’re going into communities that are not our own. We try to find crew that can, in a way, become invisible. And that they will be OK with that idea, too. We took a long time looking for what I kind of call “unicorns,” because they are able to do many different jobs and that’s key to these small crews. I think we had twenty three people in total. And then of course, you know, finding personalities that all work together. Because you’re all living together for so long.

Can you talk about the scene between Fern and the young boy? It was absolutely amazing.

CZ: Basically, the character was in the script, but… the thing about the script is, it’s sometimes more of a placeholder. And I don’t believe in “locking” the script until the morning of the last day of the shoot. That’s when the script locks for me. Like, before I met Derek [Endres], the character was supposed to be a young girl named Echo who was pregnant and on the road. And then we went out to look for Echo. And Hannah Peterson, who helped us with casting, filmed a bunch of young people she met who were living in tents in the dessert. And from those videos, there was Derek. And as soon as he started speaking, we were like, “there’s our character!” What era is this guy from?! It was like he had just walked out of a Walt Whitman poem. So we found him… and then we had to re-find him, right Mollye? He took a bus somewhere and you had to track him down. But you did, and then we got to know him… and just incorporated him into the film. We rewrote the scene for him, very similarly to how we wrote the scenes for the other main characters of the RTR, and rewrote the scenes based on some of the stuff they said, so we didn’t have to hire actors to play them— we had them play themselves. So the process isn’t really that different, they just have to memorize a few lines (which they’ve basically already said), and that’s it.

Fern is so natural in her body. It’s both beautiful and surprising, for the audience.

CZ: Well, I think for much of that I have to give credit to Fran. From early on, we wanted to celebrate aging. To celebrate the full arc of life. Because you know, sunsets are beautiful — and yes, it’s towards the end, but it depends on how you look at it. And I think unfortunately in our culture, in this country where the cosmetic industry is so enormous, and also in the film business itself, we’re quite focused on appearing a certain way. Even in cinematography, Josh has talked about this— we don’t want to put too much between the lens and the audience. We want you to see Fran as she sees her own face and her own body, without all the filters and lighting to help. We want to truly believe in our audience and have faith in our audience, and trust that they will find that being human is beautiful. And I think we feel pretty good about that so far with the responses we’ve gotten to the film.

Q&A with Garrett Bradley

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Time.

This is such a moving film. What was your emotional reaction as a filmmaker while telling this story? 

Garrett Bradley: Part of the impetus for me in making a project is that I’m already emotionally affected by something. I’m not going out and looking for stories. I think I’ve been incredibly lucky to be working in a space where the projects develop out of real relationships and things I’m already in proximity to. That isn’t to say I didn’t learn things or that my emotional capacity was still limited. I think a part of what has become really clear as the film has come out and been seen by people is that their questions really affirm and illuminate what was really meaningful and important to me in the making of the film. It’s very much tied to visibility and this question of erasure and of thinking about the abstract nature of 2.3 million people that are incarcerated. It was always really important to think about the effects of the facts. It’s about the rippling effect. It’s about what we really understand on a human and emotional level about 2.3 million people being incarcerated. When we think about this current moment and police brutality and the uprisings and the incredible role of the white allyship that is unprecedented that we’ve seen this year, so much of that is tied to optics, tied to visibility, tied to technology. And yet, when we think about the prison industrial complex, I think it really illuminates the void that exists there in being able to see what 2.3 million incarcerated people looks like. The only way to prove that and to show the effects of that is with the family, with those that are on the outside. In the process of making the film, those ideas and realities were only reaffirmed with me in a very real and visceral way.  

it was very clear that the film was going to be something wildly different than what I had envisioned

Can you talk about putting together the structure of the film? It’s unconventional and very effective.

I had originally thought I was making another short film. And the purpose of that was for me to focus on the minutiae and really illustrate how the system unequivocally embeds itself in daily life so you can’t separate yourself from the system. I spent a lot of time with Fox at work and in these very specific moments that I thought would help show and indicate that. When I thought I was done shooting—as you know, when you’re making a documentary, you have to shop shooting at some point for budget or deadline reasons—I remember saying to Fox, I’m going to come back and show you a cut of the film. And right as I was leaving, she handed me a hundred hours’ worth of her own personal home archive that she herself had not looked at since she shot it in the 90s. She knew a little bit about what was on the tapes but hadn’t really combed through it or curated it in any way. At that moment, it was very clear that the film was going to be something wildly different than what I had envisioned, and hopefully for the better.

Why did you choose to present the film in black and white? Were Fox’s videos shot that way?

The archive was actually all in color. I had really thought about this being a sister film to my short film, Alone. Alone was in black and white. This was this sort of superficial “I’m going to extrapolate the aesthetics and the pace and the tone from Alone” because I wanted the two films to feel very similar. It wasn’t until we began working through the archive that we considered going into color. But ultimately we were dealing with a lot of different textures and materiality and scales of colors, and I think for myself and Gabe Rhodes—who cut the film—it was really important to find a way to structure the film so that the mythology of love allowed there to be a perpetual sense of moving forward, but also gave us the freedom to come backwards. So we could oscillate between time as much as possible. The materiality of it, the visual element of it, was really going to be the thing that either helped us do that or not do that. To point to it versus allowing it to seem more fluid and more seamless and more linear, even though we were jumping around in the chronology. At the end of the day, even though we kind of came full circle with the original intention of black and white, it was ultimately in response to a lot of the creative questions and challenges we found ourselves asking in the process of making the film.

At the end of the film, Rob gives us an acronym for love: love is Life’s Only Valid Expression. It’s a beautiful quote from an amazing man. Can you tell us about that?

We talked about a number of things in the process of making this film. For me, it again goes back to the question, what is the intention of the folks I’m working with?  If the intention is to bring hope to the 2.3 million that are incarcerated, if not double or triple that number when we take into account those that are affected, how do I as a filmmaker translate that into my own practice, into the film, into the visual medium. I think what that turned into was thinking about resistance. How can the film also show different forms of resistance that we may take for granted, that we may not have as many optics for or visual examples of? When we think about resistance or protest, we might think about actually going out into the street and participating in something like a public protest. But how can we think about love, how can we think about a family staying together over the course of 21 years, how can we think about one’s ability to maintain their sense of individuality amidst the system… these are all forms of resistance. So I think that quote at the end of the film was incredibly important because we needed to hear from Rob. Even though for me the film ended once Fox and the family were successful in bringing him back home. It was also so crucial that he have a voice and that we see him and that he express himself in a way that felt true to himself. But I also felt it really reinforced this idea of what hope was, which is connected to these ideas of alternative forms of resistance. And love and unity and individuality are equally as powerful forms of resistance that all of us are engaging in every day. I wanted to celebrate and share that idea.

Q&A with Paul Greengrass and Helena Zengel

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of News of the World

Can you tell us about the origins of this film?     

Paul Greengrass: I think the origins of it lie in the last film I made, actually, 22 July, which was a pretty tough film about violent right-wing extremism in Europe. And I think it applied pretty much to most places, and it was rooted in the difficulties of our world today. But I did feel at the end of it that I wanted to explore more of the healing road, you know? That one was the story of a family and a young man that had been caught up in an attack, so necessarily there was a limit to how much you could answer the question, “how do we get out of this mess?” It was a true story, after all. And I find with films, if you ask yourself the right question, generally they come along. So then I was sent the novel, and I read the novel, and I thought, well this is it: this strange, beautiful story, set in the aftermath of the civil war about this lonely news reader who wanders from town to town with the healing power of storytelling… and he meets this mysterious young girl and they go on an odyssey through Texas to take her to her surviving family… They’re trying to find the road out of their divided world, as I think most of us today would like to find for our world. So that’s really where it started; I read the novel, and I thought, “that’s it.”  

You’ve got to be in a place where you are taken out of yourself and challenged

The depiction of the Kiowa tribe was fascinating. It came across as authentic, rich, and detailed. How did you work with the tribe?  

PG: That was the first real piece of work that we did when we started on the film, was to reach out to the Kiowa tribe and to talk to them, and ask their opinion of the novel (which they liked). We asked them to help us make the film, and we asked them what was important to them. That was crucial to us. What was most important to them, as they expressed many times, was the language: the film should reflect the beauty of the Kiowa language, and the fact that it’s alive, and that it’s spoken. And, secondly, that people from the Kiowa tribe should portray the Kiowa. That was very very important to them. And we followed their advice and we had some wonderful, wonderful times. They came to visit, and they stayed on the set, and of course Helena worked with them — particularly with Dorothy, who is an elder of the tribe, and a language expert — and she really took Helena under her wing, didn’t she?

Helena Zengel: She really did. She’s a great person. She’s over 90 years old! She really taught me a lot. And it was interesting to hear her version of the whole… mess, I’d say, when the white people took their land, and then what her people went through. Because, I mean, she was there. So it was interesting to hear that. And then also to really learn — not only parts of the language — but also to learn the culture, to learn their way of thinking, the importance of the circle… and also their way of living. Because they think and move differently than we do. Because we think in a straight line, and we’re very orderly, very oriented around money… and they’re, like, so free with things, compared to us. So it was very cool to hear her version of history, and to be able to talk to her because she knows a lot.

What was the most surprising thing for you, Helena, coming to the States to work on this film?

HZ: Well, first of all, that I’d really find a snake! I didn’t think— I mean, I knew there were going to be snakes, but to actually find one myself… I didn’t think that would happen. And then also it is so great in New Mexico. I’d never been to New Mexico, and it was so great to have America mixed with Mexico, kind of, because even though we were in America, everything was very… spicy! But there was also all of the typical American stuff, like fast food. I always only saw cowboys in movies, so I thought, “well, they won’t really be like that,” and then after the first day with the cowboys, I was just like, “mom… they are real! They’re not just in movies!” It’s true, they’re real. They’re like, “howdy ma’am!” Which made me so excited. That was very funny, to see that.

PG: There was one time, I don’t know if you remember this Helena, but one time you were sitting on the wagon with Tom — who by the way was just fantastic with you, looked after you so beautifully and was so generous — but one time you were sitting on the wagon while we were setting a shot up, and your microphone was live and you were chatting away with Tom, and I heard you say in a whisper, “Tom… does everybody curse all the time on an American film sets?!” And that was with us all being careful around her, too!

Paul, you spoke earlier about wanting to work in a different way than in your previous films when you started this project. As an experienced director, who are you able to depend on for advice and feedback when you’re moving into newer territory?

PG: Well, I think the answer is, I think filmmaking is a little bit like making music, you know? And when you work with new musicians, your music changes by its nature, because you’re working with different musicians who do different things that aren’t so predictable. So the honest answer is that it’s less about who you rely on, and more about who you choose to collaborate with, who come to you in a new way, you know? And that’s really, I think, the key to longevity in this business. You have to try to stretch yourself, you have to say, “well, I’m going to do a different sort of film where I’m out of my comfort zone,” so that’s the first thing you have to do. And then, maybe you have to make those choices to work with new people. Which takes you, again, out of your comfort zone. Because inevitably, you get that wonderful camaraderie you find with people that you’ve made with movies with over a long period of time. But with that, maybe you get to be a bit safe in your choices, because you rely on them so much. And, you know, the first movie I ever made in Hollywood The Bourne Supremacy, I remember deciding before I went that I was going to come on my own. I wasn’t going to bring anybody I’d made Bloody Sunday with, or those earlier films, because I knew it was going to be good for me, personally, to be out of my comfort zone with people who would… who would judge you. That’s the truth of it. You’ve got to be in a place where you are taken out of yourself and challenged. And that’s what Dariusz [Wolski] did for me, and other people too. And it’s wonderful– it makes you feel alive.

Q&A with Emerald Fennell and Carey Mulligan

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Promising Young Woman.

How did the idea for the script originate?     

Emerald Fennell: I had a few friends over for dinner and something uncomfortable had happened to one of the girls at the table on the tube on her way over. She was talking about it and all the other women around the table were talking about similar experiences they’d had, more run of the mill things. And all the men at the table—men we’ve been friends with for years—were just completely horrified by these things that women barely even mention sometimes. And then I realized that even though we had grown up together and known these men for much of our lives, we were living in completely parallel universes. So much of the stuff that the movie talks about isn’t often discussed openly and properly despite being so common. And I started thinking about how we would start this conversation.  

All you really need is for your protagonist, your heart at the center to feel real

Carey, what was it like shooting the scenes where you go home with the various men?  

Carey Mulligan: Those were really fun to shoot. There was a lot of communication between Emerald and I in those scenes. Some of the other scenes, like the ones with Beau where their romance is developing were a bit more free flowing. There was so much to manage in the scenes where she goes home with these guys, in terms of the way she is pretending to be drunk, what the person in the room with her is seeing, what the audience is seeing, how she’s feeling and at what point she turns. Every time we filmed one of those scenes, we were talking in between takes and trying different things. Emerald has such good taste that I felt so secure to go all over the map with it. The range of those scenes were quite big on the day we shot, but then we landed on things that worked the best. Because it is a blend of something so distinctly uncomfortable and also very darkly funny, I felt like it was something we really had to play with a lot and tackle together. But they were a blast. The first time Chris Mintz-Plasse gave me a little kiss on the nose, I couldn’t get through the take without laughing.

You dance seamlessly between genres in this film, conveying comedy and thriller and horror and romance at the same time. What sort of discussions did you have with the cast and crew about the type of film you were making?

EF: I think it helps that that’s sort of what my day-to-day life feels like. I think especially a lot of women can identify with that… how the fun and love are often intermingled with something much darker. Certainly, the revenge thriller genre is something I was always wanting to both have the pleasures of but also to undermine. It’s a difficult thing about genre. All you really need is for your protagonist, your heart at the center to feel real. And that’s why Carey is so amazing. What’s important in this film are the things that ground it and first and foremost is Carey’s performance. It’s completely true. We never wanted this to be an arch performance or some badass whip smart piece that we’ve seen before. It needed to be very truthful and to make sense in the context of her life. Then it was about making sure every decision we made was about reflecting the way that Cassie sees the world.

CM: I think I really go into films quite small, which is why I have no capacity as a director. I feel like such an actor for hire, particularly when I get an opportunity like this one. Because of the trust I had in Emerald, I didn’t concern myself with much other than trying to be honest. Any humor my character had was in the writing. We had conversations about the backstory, about who Cassie was before all of this started, and crucially, who Nina was. This was about love. This was about an act of extreme loyalty. I don’t think you can operate with the idea that you’re going to set out and exact revenge. She was trying to correct an injustice and couldn’t rest until that happened. Talking about the film this week, someone asked me “do you think she’s just a bit nuts?” and it tickled me because there are so many films where men go on massive revenge crusades over someone that they love and have lost, and never once have I heard them being described as crazy. I think that strength of love really roots the film. Emerald’s sentiment was that it was that sisterhood and that friendship that started Cassie’s journey.

The entire look of the film is amazing and I was really struck by Nancy’s Steiner’s costumes. What did the wardrobe say about Cassie?

CM: One of the things that I remember from our first meeting was talking about the look of the film. In the interim of reading the script and meeting Emerald, she had sent me this mood board that had all these beautiful pinks and fluffy things. She said she was not interested in making a film about a woman in a gray cardigan starting out the window. It’s going to look beautiful and be enticing; it’ll be a world you want to be in. And that excited me so much. And I think that’s what she delivered. It’s a film you want to watch. Not a film that you think you should watch because it’s important, though it is, but it’s also a world you want to be immersed in. In terms of Cassie’s psychology, it really was important that she looked completely in control. As someone who took care of their appearance with the hair and the manicures… that’s not someone you need check in on. All of that was very deliberate on Em’s part during conversations with hair and makeup and Nancy. Cassie is someone who, based on the outside, is someone you can really leave alone, she’s okay. She’s a little odd but you don’t need to worry about her. She’s really hiding in plain sight and looks completely unthreatening in a way that works to her favor.  Emerald would give feedback in all the fittings. It was a real collaboration. And then on the other side of it were these evening personas and the different outfits she wears when she’s going out.

EF: So much of it was Nancy. The people who came on board were amazing. We shot it in 23 days. It was a true independent film and you don’t expect to get these kinds of people, but it was a dream come true. What I love about Nancy, in addition to being so clever and insightful, is that she has a particular knack for a kind of subverted femininity. When you think of The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation and even Twin Peaks, there’s a kind of uncanniness to the way those women dress, which on the surface is tactile and feminine and appealing but also sort of not quite right. And that’s what she does. Some of the things she found for Cassie were just thrift store finds that you wouldn’t see anywhere else and on the surface they’re very lovely pretty things but there’s also something kind of strange about them.

The scene with Alfred Molina was one of the most moving in the film. Carey, what was it like working with him again on something requires you both to be so vulnerable?

CM: It was such a treat to get to work with him again, since I loved working with him on An Education. The great thing about Alfred is that he’s one of those actors where, when you hear he’s been cast, you never really know how he’s doing to do it. He was one of the actors we didn’t find rehearsal time for in advance because he was busy on our rehearsal day. It all came on the day we shot. What he does is so unnerving and so vulnerable and so passionate. His self-hatred is so intense and his desire for someone to literally lay a hand on him and grant him forgiveness is so massive. It was really affecting, every time we did it. When you work with someone like him you go in trying to raise your game as much as you can. I thought he brought so much history to a character that only has one scene and he has such a huge impact on the film.

NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW ANNOUNCES 2020 AWARD WINNERS

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THE NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW NAMES 2020 HONOREES
INCLUDING DA 5 BLOODS FOR BEST FILM
AND SPIKE LEE FOR BEST DIRECTOR

New York, NY (January 26, 2021) – The National Board of Review today announced their 2020 honorees, with Da 5 Bloods earning Best Film and Best Director for Spike Lee, Best Actor for Riz Ahmed in Sound of Metal, and Best Actress for Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman. The organization has also announced that Chadwick Boseman will posthumously receive the NBR Icon Award, an honor that celebrates the work of leading cinematic artists who contribute meaningfully to the history, culture, and excellence of motion pictures. The NBR will announce its plans to celebrate its 2020 honorees at a later date.

“The NBR is proud to honor Da 5 Bloods, Spike Lee, and the film’s incredible ensemble cast, along with all of our 2020 awardees. Lee is one of our greatest filmmakers, a bold auteur with a cinematic vision and an astute perspective on human relationships, focusing at times on that intersection between the personal and the political. Da 5 Bloods is not only a unique portrait of the experience and lingering trauma of Black Vietnam War veterans, but also a moving story of enduring friendship, a suspenseful jungle treasure hunt, and a powerful reckoning with the American dream,” said NBR President Annie Schulhof. “We are also honored to present the posthumous NBR Icon Award to Chadwick Boseman, an extraordinary talent who represented the best of what an actor could be no matter what the role.”

The 2020 awards continue the NBR’s tradition of recognizing excellence in filmmaking, going back 112 years. This year 281 films were viewed by a select group of film enthusiasts, filmmakers, professionals, academics, and students, many of which were followed by in-depth discussions with directors, actors, producers, and screenwriters. Voting ballots were tabulated by the accounting firm of Lutz & Carr, LLP.     

The National Board of Review’s awards celebrate excellence in filmmaking with categories that include Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Actress, Best Original and Adapted Screenplay, Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Animated Feature, Best Documentary, Breakthrough Performance, and Best Directorial Debut as well as signature honors such as the Spotlight Award, Freedom of Expression and the NBR Icon Award.    

Below is a full list of the 2020 award recipients, announced by the National Board of Review:

Best Film: DA 5 BLOODS
Best Director: Spike Lee, DA 5 BLOODS
Best Actor: Riz Ahmed, SOUND OF METAL
Best Actress: Carey Mulligan, PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
Best Supporting Actor: Paul Raci, SOUND OF METAL
Best Supporting Actress: Youn Yuh-jung, MINARI
Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Greengrass & Luke Davies, NEWS OF THE WORLD
Best Original Screenplay: Lee Isaac Chung, MINARI
Breakthrough Performance: Sidney Flanigan, NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS
Best Directorial Debut: Channing Godfrey Peoples, MISS JUNETEENTH
Best Animated Feature: SOUL
Best Foreign Language Film: LA LLORONA
Best Documentary: TIME
NBR Icon Award: Chadwick Boseman
NBR Freedom of Expression Award: ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI
NBR Spotlight Award: Radha Blank for writing, directing, producing and starring in THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION
Best Ensemble: DA 5 BLOODS
Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography: Joshua James Richards, NOMADLAND

Top Films (in alphabetical order)

First Cow
The Forty-Year-Old Version
Judas and the Black Messiah
The Midnight Sky
Minari
News of the World
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Soul
Sound of Metal

Top 5 Foreign Language Films (in alphabetical order)

Apples
Collective
Dear Comrades!
The Mole Agent
Night of the Kings

Top 5 Documentaries (in alphabetical order)

ALL IN: The Fight For Democracy
Boys State
Dick Johnson is Dead
Miss Americana
The Truffle Hunters

Top 10 Independent Films (in alphabetical order)

The Climb
Driveways
Farewell Amor
Miss Juneteenth
The Nest
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
The Outpost
Relic
Saint Frances
Wolfwalkers

ABOUT THE NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW
Since 1909, the National Board of Review has dedicated its efforts to the support of cinema as both art and entertainment. Each year, this select group of film enthusiasts, filmmakers, professionals and academics of varying ages and backgrounds watches over 250 films and participates in illuminating discussions with directors, actors, producers and screenwriters before announcing their selections for the best work of the year.  Since first citing year-end cinematic achievements in 1929, NBR has recognized a vast selection of outstanding studio, independent, foreign-language, animated and documentary films, often propelling recipients such as Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, Peter Farrelly’s Green Book and George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road into the larger awards conversation. NBR also stands out as the only film organization that bestows a film history award in honor of former member and film historian William K. Everson. In addition, one of the organization’s core values is identifying new talent and nurturing young filmmakers by awarding promising talent with ‘Directorial Debut’ and ‘Breakthrough Actor’ awards as well as grants to rising film students and by facilitating community outreach through the support of organizations such as The Ghetto Film School, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, and Educational Video Center. With its continued efforts to assist up-and-coming artists in completing and presenting their work, NBR honors its commitment to not just identifying the best that current cinema has to offer, but also ensuring the quality of films for future generations to come.   

Join the conversation @NBRfilm

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