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She'll tell you acting is her calling, but then you listen to Victoria Blade sing and watch her direct -- her most recent film, VICKY WAKES UP (2026) won the episodes grand jury prize at the 2026 Slamdance Film Festival -- and I'm with you in thinking maybe three things are her calling.

Filmmaker Victoria Blade is here to talk about her path to winning filmmaking prizes, and it starts with thinking she's going to be a dramatic actor and realizing she's can play comedy just as well. and then just rolling with the opportunities given to her. I get it: acting is her first love.

But this blend of comedy and drama about things we don't see very often, means I'm dying to see Victoria in the director's chair again as soon as possible.

In this episode, Victoria and I talk about:

• why VICKY WAKES UP won at Slamdance;
• how she got started in filmmaking;
• finding her home in comedies;
• why more classically trained actors don't make the leap to directing?
• whether it was hard for people to see her as a director, given her success in acting and singing;
• what she brought to the casting process for VICKY WAKES UP and if her reputation helped attract great actors;
• if she has a preference of writing, acting, or directing;
• whether there's other episodes ready to go for VICKY WAKES UP;
• how she incorporated surrealism into the show;
• do indie films do enough with music?
• cubicles -- why both her films showcase office environments;
• directing herself in her films and what she'd tell directors who want to act;
• how she feels about influencers getting into acting;
• what's next for her and how she chooses who to work with.

Victoria's Indie Film Highlights: DANNY IS MY BOYFRIEND (2025) dir. by Lucy Sandler and Mechi Lakatos; SCRATCH (2023) dir. by Michael Trainotti

Memorable Quotes:

"What stood out to them was the deeper themes of sexism in the workplace; of the need to pursue our deeper dreams; and the positive vibe that music can bring when even when we're in really dark times."

"So I came out of acting school just thinking I was gonna be a dramatic actor because that's what I taught, but what I learned really quickly is that it was easy for me to bring levity into the room."

"Even when you do have a successful acting career, you have a lot of free time."

"I learned that really as a director, you're sitting in such a privileged seat because there's so much talent and only one person gets the job."

"Whenever you see filmmakers who are going to festivals and they're hiring a casting director and they're really putting their all behind a project, that's attractive to me."

"It is if Pam Beasley from "The Office" slowly became a pop star."

"I don't see a lot of films that talk about music in a very practical way, like in a relatable way."

"It's not like the drudgery and the commitment and the discomfort that it actually takes to change your life."

"The acting becomes instinctual."

"Yeah, I think in the current landscape of the industry with things just constantly changing and evolving and no one really, honestly, knowing what the hell is going on, it's very silly to try to gatekeep anything because this is this is like a free for all. If you wanna go, do it."

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RE-RELEASE: I'm re-releasing this episode, in part to congratulate the team behind MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN (2025), who won the Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars, and also give further background to director David Borenstein's comments at the event. After you listen to this episode and hear about his background, his words come from experience. Congratulations, team. So well deserved.

From December, 2025:

Surely he didn't know it then, but his work in media in China made my guest, filmmaker David Borenstein, the perfect person to direct MR NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN (2025). It's a fantastic film following a Russian teacher "secretly documenting his school becoming a war recruitment center during the Ukraine invasion."

What David and especially his co-director, Pasha Talankin did was make a film at great personal risk because it's so cutting towards the Russian authoritarian regime. And astonishingly, as David shares in the podcast, he wants to do more of these stories in repressed societies.

Thank God there are people like David and Pasha. Denmark's nominee for best international film at the 2026 Oscars is an absolute gem.

In this episode, David and I discuss:

• the simplicity of the documentary and whether the overwhelmingly positive reaction surprised him;
• how he got started in filmmaking and his familiarity with heavily propagandistic societies;
• the difference between journalism and documentary filmmaking (he has an incredible answer here);
• the debates with his co-director about the concept of propaganda;
• how cool it would be to see a documentary or podcast on the making of MR NOBODY;
• logistically, how did the film happen?;
• how his co-director became knowledgeable behind the camera;
• advice for anybody interested in doing a project like this, especially when you aren't in the same place as your co-director!;
• how he edited the project and who got the line credit for it;
• how we can better support filmmakers in places like China and Russia;
• when the film will be available for streaming and the challenges of finding distribution in the United States;
• the clash between US and Europe distributors for documentary films;
• what's next for him.

David's Indie Filmmaker Highlight: Nathan Fielder

Memorable Quotes:

"The co-director, he actually responded to a casting call in the beginning. So in the beginning, we were filming him as a character."

"The very first time that I was involved with cameras of any sort was actually as a Chinese speaking host on Chinese TV."

"if you are a quite fluent foreign speaker of Chinese living in China, they'll find you after a while. You are a curiosity to Chinese audiences."

"[John Grierson] defined documentary in a very special way. He didn't define it as journalism per se. He actually called it the propaganda of democracy."

"There were so many points where I thought about quitting or walking away 'cause it was so hard. But don't give up." 

"The way I work with editors is I make a rough cut myself and then I deliver it to editors to work for a little bit of time to challenge me." 

"I think it's really important as director to be generous."

"[The film] is resonating with people in Russia and not necessarily people who are already part of the Russian opposition."

"I'm still really interested in getting into the big kind of countries that we don't understand enough, Russia and China."

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Every Sunday, I'll post a quick video -- and podcast -- about an indie film from at least a year ago. Today's film: HARD EIGHT (1996)

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson

Stars: Philip Baker Hall; John C. Reilly; Samuel L. Jackson; Gwyneth Paltrow

SYNOPSIS

Veteran gambler Sydney befriends a young man named John, transforming into a Las Vegas casino champion. John falls for a prostitute, and the couple soon finds themselves in need of Sydney's help.

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If there's something that Mark Elijah Rosenberg hasn't done in film, I don't know what it is.

Started Rooftop Films, which presents art and films around New York. Made a studio feature. Made deeply personal short films like ____ IN PARIS (2026), which he premiered at Slamdance this year. Made interactive art. Taught film. With a background like that, I knew the insight he would bring is incredible, and he doesn't disappoint here.

The best part is you can tell Mark has thought about all these bigger issues in filmmaking, too, and I'm so thrilled he's here to share his perspective.

Mark and I discuss:

• why Slamdance for the premiere of ___ IN PARIS (2026);
• how he got started in filmmaking and if he knew when he started Rooftop Films if he wanted to work on his own projects;
• what Rooftop Films has taught him about the theatrical experience;
• the process of creating his first studio feature, APPROACHING THE UNKNOWN (2016), and how it wound up so different than his vision;
• how the experience of making the film might be different today;
• what advice he gives his students and labs today from all of his studio and independent filmmaking experiences;
• why big, heavy philosophical topics are important to him;
• what should people expect to watch ___ IN PARIS and why does he make so many personal stories;
• how the next generation of filmmakers will approach these deeper questions;
• what his next projects are.

Mark's Indie Film Highlights: AMERICAN GIGOLO (1980) dir. by Paul Schrader; Ja'Tovia Gary

Memorable Quotes:

"The people at Slamdance care about their filmmakers and the filmmaker experience and supporting them as much as any festival I've ever seen in the world." 

"We don't screen in theaters, we screen in neighborhoods."

"With some slight variation for special screenings and regions, most movie tickets all across America cost the exact same."

"There should be a move towards more truly nonprofit filmmaking where films are supported in the arts the same way other art forms are."

"And the NASA administrator said it doesn't help national defense, except in that it makes America a country worth defending."

Making his first feature: "It was a wonderful and difficult and amazing experience."

"This gets back to also the sort of capitalism of filmmaking. If I hadn't made those compromises, the people with the money would've pulled out."

"Don't submit to most festivals unless you think you're gonna be able to go."

"For my students, for any artist, for myself, you have to find that thing that you care about, that you wanna say in the world, but then you also have to find the structure to put it in."

"So the next one is actually about the the physical force of gravity but gravity, both as a force of physics in the world, in the universe, but also as a sort of metaphor for our lives."

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My conversation with filmmaker Sylvia Ray was eye-opening for me in so many ways. Let's start from the top: SEAWEED SNACKS (2026) is phenomenal filmmaking that is slightly dark, extremely funny, and captures a social dynamic that we too often don't see on screen: dads at a birthday party. Sylvia directed it, and the film was a product of Film Independent's Project Involve, where the SEAWEED SNACKS team was the only one with three out of 31 people with kids.

I'm seeing this from the vantage of someone who is chronically online, but the kids/no kids debate is frustrating to me. Both sides often talk about how you're living life wrong if you're on one side of it or the other. I don't feel we should look at it in such a binary way, and the show is a friendly place to talk about ways in which independent filmmaking can make living your best life easier.

In this case, as Sylvia shares, it was having kids that turned her into the dynamic filmmaker she is. SEAWEED SNACKS and her films don't exist without them and I feel so very lucky they do.

Sylvia and I talk about:

• her incredible output of five films in close to five years and whether she still has that same feeling of excitement when they come out;
• directing material that you didn't write;
• how she got started in filmmaking and how having kids focused her vision on what she wanted to do -- directing;
• finding your community, whether it's at film school or elsewhere;
• how she won over friends and colleagues at top film schools;
• what is the Film Independent Project Involve experience like?;
• what makes a great lab and what doesn't work regarding labs and fellowship;
• how she wants people to feel watching SEAWEED SNACKS and whether it's harder to find laughs than in a drama;
• surrealism in the film and why it makes films so much better when used appropriately;
• what makes a great short film and the distribution system for shorts;
• whether she sees the growth from her previous films;
• what the climate in Los Angeles is right now for shooting films;
• childcare on set and the state of parenting and filmmaking;
• what's next for her.

Sylvia's Indie Film Highlight: BETTER LIFE (2025) dir. by Jessica Liu; THE INHERITANCE dir. by Destinee Stewart

Memorable Quotes:

"The excitement is definitely still there. It just feels like a shared responsibility or a shared vulnerability."

"it never occurred to me that's something that I would pursue is arts or performance arts until I had my first kid actually."

"There was something really empowering about having him and my second child...it rewired my brain in a lot of different ways and made me think of how capable I am."

"The biggest life saving part of being in this career is finding my community." 

"What can I do in order to get to set and work and do what I love? I look at it a little bit like a sport."

On Project Involve: "I knew their intention and they made this very clear in the beginning was that they wanted us to create community and build collaborations that would go on into the future."

"And particularly parents who are artists, I hope that it feels like that they're being seen in some way."

"When I was pitching on it, I lost my home in the fires and I think I was just really in a what is life? What is money? And then just going through all of these life can just feel surreal at times."

"Consuming a lot of shorts allowed me to feel confident that this was gonna work and play well on festivals."

Links:

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Every Sunday, I'll post a quick video -- and podcast -- about an indie film from at least a year ago. Today's film: THE CELEBRATION (1998)

Director: Thomas Vinterberg

Screenplay: Thomas Vinterberg; Mogens Rukov

Stars: Henning Moritzen; Ulrich Thomsen; Thomas Bo Laren

SYNOPSIS

A dark secret mars a Dane's (Henning Moritzen) 60th birthday celebration, attended by his family (Ulrich Thomsen, Thomas Bo Larsen) and friends.

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So when I invite someone on the podcast, it's usually about promoting a particular project at a festival. There certainly is that here with director Andrew Kightlinger regarding his genre-breaking film OKAY (2026), which had its world premiere at Slamdance 2026, a festival that he also served on the jury. But we don't hit OKAY discussion until minute 27!

That shouldn't surprise you, though, if you look at Andrew's biography. His origin story is incredible, yes, but what fascinated me the most is how deeply knowledgeable he is about the art of filmmaking. He was brought on to direct OKAY to highlight Fujifilm's GFX ETERNA 55 and Andrew did it in a way that made me rethink how he deal with human emotions on screen. There's a documentary about the project that is well worth watching.

I wish every camera maker funded a gorgeous film to highlight their products. And I wish every filmmaker was as thoughtful as Andrew.

In this episode, Andrew and I discuss:

• is Slamdance too indie? a hearty defense of the festival;
• his unique background into filmmaking, South Dakota by way of Madagascar;
• how pirated blockbusters are what's easily accessible around the world, including a hilarious story about belatedly watching TITANIC (1997);
• starting with shorts or jumping into features;
• the wild story about how he became a director and what he turned down to stay independent and true to his vision;
• how he makes successful pitches for investors, including a lot of dentists (who knew?!);
• how to find great collaborators;
• the common threads for films he judged at Slamdance and whether chapter headings say something about episodic content;
• what is OKAY about and how Andrew describes it;
• how to depict grief on screen and why OKAY is so original in its handling of the subject;
• giving feedback in a creative and useful way that finds a way to make art honestly;
• the connection between Fujifilm and Andrew;
• whether the ubiquity of great cameras means we're moving back to more story-led films;
• why some big budget films "look like crap";
• how indie films are screened and if Fujifilm thought about how people would watch the film;
• what's next for him.

Andrew's Indie Film Highlight: WALKABOUT (1971) dir. by Nicholas Roeg; DIRTY WORK (1998) dir. by Bob Saget

Memorable Quotes:

"If anybody's thinking, ugh that's too hoity tody or that's not good enough, or whatever, just stop and just submit the movie...the movies are very varied. It's a very eclectic selection of films, and the tastes are all over the place, and that's what's really fun about the festival. It's it's a cornucopia of stuff and everybody should submit."

"why is this kid obsessed with movies? Like, why? We want a scientist."

"So we didn't see the last hour of Titanic until a year later when we went to Minnesota." 

"Because I went out to my dentist and said, hey, can I get 10 grand? He [said], sure!"

"A valuable lesson to learn as a filmmaker: choose your collaborators wisely."

"Look at my name in the credits and you want to feel good about helping a young artist. And if you sell that to them, they'll invest. If you sell them numbers, they're not gonna do it."

"Shorts are good as reps in the gym."

"The common thread between all the movies that I watched on the feature jury, the movies in competition, I would say that 70% of them were in black and white, which is a trend right now, which kinda shocked me. And almost 50% of them had chapter headings throughout the film."

"The short film is a movie about grief at its core, and it's about a woman who is grieving the death of her husband and she's trying to find healing by searching for him in the cosmos. And that's the general idea of the film, and people just need to watch it to figure out what that means."

"OKAY is the most honest move I've ever made because I was able to pour myself into it."

"Younger filmmakers send me like their ideas or treatments like, Hey, could you look at this? And I can tell that it's been written with that [AI] format."

"[OKAY] was the weirdest concept by far. But they said, oh, that's our favorite one." 

"I wanted to make a movie that had very formalistic editing and very dirty 70 style camera work as well. And they didn't shy away from that."

Links:

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Kate Cobb is one of the most dynamic filmmakers working right now, and it's because she's willing to be an actress, an editor, a writer, a director, as well as empower everyone else on set to make the film happen. Her feature debut, OKIE (2024), was a revelation for its authenticity and heart, so it's no surprise that the filmmaker behind it is, too.

Her new film, BRB (2026), premiered at Slamdance 2026 to fantastic reviews. It's a "love letter to early Internet girlhood", and I'm so thrilled to see Kate's ambition expand to such a well-written, personal film.

As she talks about in pod, she already has a third film in the can -- this is the story of a person fully taking the reins of her career and making great art. I'm absolutely here for it.

Kate and I talk about:

• what is BRB, her stunning second film that premiered at Slamdance 2026;
• her takeaways after her first film, OKIE (2024);
• the journey from acting at DePaul University to directing;
• the wisdom of making a proof of concept short before making OKIE;
• how we should talk about -- and rate -- first features without being condescending;
• why she directs films that other people wrote;
• casting people with large social media followers, and finding someone like that who can truly act in Zoe Colletti;
• distribution for the film and what she learned from OKIE;
• how being an actor informs how she runs a set;
• what it's like working with a business partner who is also a life partner;
• what's next for this astonishingly creative filmmaker and is there a job on set she *hasn't* done?!

Kate's Indie Film Highlights: GUACAMOLE YESTERDAYS (2024) dir. by Jordan Noel; EDGE OF EVERYTHING (2023) dir. by Pablo Feldman and Sophia Sabella

Memorable Quotes:

"I think I learned that the festival part is such a joyful experience and to treat it as such."

"When I turned towards directing and when I did...it was like putting on the right size shoes for the first time in my life. All of a sudden I was like, oh, wow, I'm using my artist heart, but I'm also using my like corporate shill brain."

"If you learn every single job, no one can stop you from making a movie."

"Your first feature is precious. It's precious because you, yes, you're not the best filmmaker in the world and no, you're gonna mess up and you don't have the luxury of a huge budget or a bunch of time or even a bunch of experience, but that's what makes it amazing, because you're finding that person while you do it."

"I want my audience to be able to see themselves within it. And in order to do that, it has to start with me seeing myself within it."

"I was an actor for so many years and I've been on so many different types of sets, and let me tell you, most of them are run by men. I had a lot of thoughts on that as far as basically it gave me a map. Not all men, obviously there are incredible male directors and filmmakers."

"The absolute enemy of creativity is when people cannot feel vulnerable."

"Make a seat for fear."

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Every Sunday, I'll post a quick video -- and podcast -- about an indie film from at least a year ago. Today's film: MISTRESS DISPELLER (2024)

Director: Elizabeth Lo

Writers: Charlotte Munch Bengtsen; Elizabeth Lo

Stars: Fei Fei; Wang Zhenxi

SYNOPSIS

A Chinese woman hires someone to secretly end her husband's extramarital relationship in an attempt to save her marriage.

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I can't think of a better way to start special Slamdance coverage than with Sammy LeMieur, talking about his film, THE LEMIEURS (2026), which debuted at Slamdance this week.

The logline: Fearing regret and desperate to keep hold of their history, the five sons of a small-town Minnesota matriarch must reconcile her aging, while her three grandsons running a funeral home face death head-on.

I spend a fair amount of time in Minnesota so I can say: this is exactly what it's like. That was one of his goals at film school -- to show people the real Minnesota -- and for him to be able to pull it off, it's an incredible story.

Over the next few weeks, the pod will release episodes more frequently than Tuesdays and Fridays (in theory, anyway) with a host of interesting Slamdance films.

Slamdance is one of my favorite festivals because it attracts unique and groundbreaking films that are still absolutely independent. As long as I have a podcast, there will be Slamdance episodes, and of course, I'd start with Minnesota and filmmaker Sammy LeMieur.

In this episode, Sammy and I talk about:

• why Minnesota is rarely on screen and why his film is such a breath of fresh air;
• how he got started in filmmaking in Minnesota;
• why NYU and if he recommends going to film school;
• the importance of creating short films in his filmmaking journey;
• how THE LEMIEURS got its start;
• what he wants people to feel when they watch this deeply personal film;
• the ending everyone sees coming -- but you don't want to see;
• his families' reaction to the film;
• his path into making documentaries and what his future in the genre holds;
• the distribution for his film and generally for docs;
• what's next for him, which is another doc that I can't wait to see.

Memorable Quotes:

"We were the first NYU production to shoot in Minnesota."

"You pay for film school to meet your collaborators and...for the opportunity to use the equipment and make a movie."

"I think there's something about short films that really teach you structure."

"What I want people to feel is just be, feel like a LeMieur for 70 minutes, like you're a part of this family from when you sit down and when you leave the theater."

"I knew from the start that it was always gonna end like that, and I figured the audience would know that too. And that was the challenge was like, how do you create a progression and create a rising conflict throughout this story that you know where it's gonna go?"

"I always thought I was gonna be a fiction guy, like with more a narrative approach. But I think like I said they're the same to me."

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