We Need to Talk About Oscar

Director Stanley Kwan's 1991 film 'Center Stage' returns in a 4K restoration marking its 35th anniversary, revisiting how experimental the biopic was for its time, arriving in Hong Kong as a commercial gamble rather than the awards bait the genre has since become. He recalls whether anyone pushed back against something this unconventional, and considers what it means to watch his younger self on screen, physically present within the film's meta structure, interviewing his own actors.
Director Kwan walks through the delicate task of supervising the restoration's color correction, guarding the deliberate grain of the 16mm and archival footage from digital tools eager to treat texture as damage. The film's opening asks a young Maggie Cheung whether she wants to be remembered fifty years later, a question that lands differently now that she has become exactly that kind of enduring figure. He traces how Cheung's own relationship to fame in that room shaped his direction of her through the historical scenes, and names the qualities in cinematographer Poon Hang Sang, better known for action films, that earned him trust on something this intimate.
Late in the film, the camera crew appears on screen beside Ruan Lingyu's body, breaking the illusion at the story's most tragic point. Director Kwan explains why that rupture felt necessary rather than distancing, and looks back across 50 years of Ruan's absence, and thirty-five since he made the film, to weigh how his own sense of her legacy has shifted with age.
(Photo: Courtesy of Stanley Kwan)

Director Kent Jones joins us to discuss his second narrative feature 'Late Fame,' working from a script by Samy Burch, who appeared on this show around the time of 'May December.' Kent reflects on collaborating with a writer defining a different generational moment in the industry, and what that pairing revealed about where their worldviews aligned or pushed against each other.
We unpack the decision to open the film with archival footage of the New York art scene before shifting into the present day, and why establishing that historical anchor mattered for the visual rules of everything that follows. Drawing on decades spent as a critic and programmer looking at how audiences absorb culture, he compares that mindset to the intuitive, split-second decisions required on a live set.
The conversation turns to the visual choices, from camerawork to staging to production design, that distinguish the film's wealthier dreamers from Ed and Gloria's more precarious reality. Kent closes by reflecting on how directing two features rooted in character and New York atmosphere has changed his relationship to reading a script and imagining, then realizing its visual possibilities.
(Photo: Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)

Writer-director Lucía Aleñar Iglesias made her feature debut with 'Forastera' in a place that belongs more to her past than her present, returning to Mallorca and the world of her father's family after years spent in States. Lucía considers whether that distance sharpened her perspective or left her questioning her authority to tell this story, and how English entered the mix alongside Catalan and Spanish in a film set entirely on the island.
Our conversation turns to the polka dot romper Cata finds in her grandmother's closet, an object whose pattern eventually made its way onto the poster and shaped the film's visual language, and to Zoe Stein, Lucía's collaborator since the original short, and the particular challenge of directing grief expressed as imitation, as Cata absorbs her late grandmother's clothes, mannerisms, and eventually her voice. We then discuss where a character inhabiting someone else ends and an actor inhabiting that character begins, and reflects on how differently each family member processes the same loss, from participation to withdrawal, and how much of that came from life around her versus invention.
We explore the film's relationship to Mallorca's overwhelming summer light, and the choice to locate unease inside brightness rather than shadow, anchored by a lamp that keeps flickering and malfunctioning throughout the house. Lucía closes by weighing in on the ghost story label so often attached to the film, and whether she considers it one herself or finds the term too narrow for what she was actually after.
(Photo credit: Monica Lek)

We are joined by writer-director Elliot Tuttle and actors Reed Birney and Kieron Moore to discuss 'Blue Film,' a chamber drama that faced rejection from multiple festivals before finding distribution with Obscured Releasing. Elliot reflects on what kept him determined to make the film without compromising the story despite knowing most festivals wouldn't program it, while Reed and Kieron share whether they had reservations about the project seeing the light of day when they first read the script.
We explore how a project this risky reads differently depending on where you are in your career, with one actor in the first half and another in the second half of their profession. Elliot and cinematographer Ryan Jackson-Healy made a bold visual choice implied by the title itself: relying heavily on one color to define the film's language. He discusses the potential pitfalls they identified in that decision and how they navigated them. Reed and Kieron each highlight what the other brought to help them reach the vulnerable place their roles demanded.
The conversation turns to what it means to ask actors to bare themselves physically and emotionally on camera. Elliot examines how he moved from daring to make such requests to actually being able to ask for what the film required, and the trust that had to exist between director and performers for 'Blue Film' to work.
(Photos: Courtesy of Obscured Releasing)

Director Nicole Bazuin's 'Modern Whore' began as a 2018 illustrated memoir collaboration with Andrea Werhun, evolved through multiple shorts including one that premiered at SXSW in 2020, and now arrives as a feature documentary that's traveled from TIFF to theatrical release. Nicole reflects on how over a decade of friendship and creative partnership shaped what the film ultimately became.
The hybrid documentary mixes sit-down interviews, scripted reenactments with Andrea playing herself, unscripted conversations with her mother and partner, and animation. Nicole made the bold choice to shoot portions on a volume wall, bringing blockbuster LED technology into an indie documentary context, pushing back against conventional expectations of what a documentary about sex work should look like.
Having worn every major creative hat on the film as director, writer, producer, and editor, Nicole built Virgin Twins with Andrea into a company whose first feature has won multiple documentary awards and secured both theatrical and digital distribution. She considers whether this feature represents the culmination of what they'd been building toward, or if it marks the beginning of something new rather than an ending.