We Need to Talk About Oscar

‘Pop Pop’ world premieres at PÖFF in Tallinn after over half a decade of work, and Dylan Stephen Levers recalls how complete the script was at the outset and how the country’s shifting mood, culminating at the Capitol on January 6th, forced it to bend. Cinematographer Consuelo Althouse describes how she entered the picture, and both admit what it cost to keep an unfinished feature alive as their lives, careers, and tastes kept changing around it.
Best friends Dustin and Dibz share an apartment and an internet series, fresh out of college and unsure where they fit in a messy adult world of male fragility and identity crisis. With cameras rolling near real protests, the filmmakers found themselves inside history while making fiction, and they wonder what a documentary cut of that material would look like. The film’s sharp take on online culture, from toxic masculinity to cancel culture, came with a question of how to keep compassion in view without dulling the satire.
Its look riffs on retro computer interfaces, built as a retrofuturistic digital world soaked in memes and social media references, and they recall whether that concept was fixed on the page, how it influenced the framing of scenes, and how it eased or complicated the edit. They also talk about what a neutral camera even means when fiction and documentary share the same frame, and what lines they would not cross on set through all those lean years.

Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson spent years trying to get ‘Mouse,’ shot in Kelly’s Arkansas hometown, made, and a detour through ‘Ghostlight’ showed them how small a footprint they could work with and still keep full control. The film grows from a death Kelly lived through as a teenager, wrapped around an invented friendship between Minnie and the grieving mother, and she speaks to keeping that blend honest to her memory while Alex finds where his own instincts belong in staging it.
Sophie Okonedo’s arrival as a British pianist adrift in central Arkansas gave Helen a loneliness that only deepens once Callie is gone, and Katherine Mallen Kupferer, known for her big, booming energy in ‘Ghostlight,’ is asked here for the opposite, a girl who keeps her feelings sealed away. The directors recall spotting that hidden range in her and helping her trust stillness, and Kelly’s background as an actor tunes her to talents performers haven’t yet discovered in themselves. Minnie’s pull from her mother Barbara’s cluttered animal rescue toward the hushed elegance of Helen’s house takes its shape from Linda Lee’s design, which makes it feel like a hunger for calm instead of ingratitude.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Phantom Thread’ and Terrence Malick’s ‘The Thin Red Line’ guided the look, and they explain why teenage heartbreak earned that grand, serious treatment. Two cinematographers, Nate Hurtsellers and Luke Dyra, worked side by side as A and B camera, and the pair break down how they kept the footage cohesive. They also look ahead to ‘The Steel Harp,’ where they direct from inside the action with Kelly back on screen as the lead, and how that changes the way they communicate when she can’t slip away to the monitor.
(Photo: Courtesy of IFC Films)

Dan Sallitt returns to Jackie, the young woman at the center of ‘The Unspeakable Act,’ more than a decade later, and he tells how his view of sequels shifted once he made one. He recounts when the urge to revisit that film first arrived and what it meant that it began as one chapter of a planned trilogy. Many people at the New York Film Festival premiere had never seen the original, and he says what that showed him about how well the new film stands alone. He also addresses how keeping its subject buried, where the first film spoke about it openly, changed the way he built tension in the dialogue.
Between the two films, Dan directed Tallie Medel in ‘Fourteen,’ and he outlines what that experience added to their rapport when they came back to Jackie. An intimacy coordinator brought an unfamiliar authority onto a set he usually keeps tightly in hand, notable for a filmmaker who stopped shooting nude scenes years ago to avoid friction, and he describes how he adjusted. Jackie is now training for a career in counseling while carrying unresolved feelings of her own, and he points to where that setup gave him the most charged material.
Writing about film is a solitary habit while directing is a team effort, and Dan admits his early notes to actors were so cerebral that they sometimes hurt performances. He remembers when that sank in and describes the plainer, more playable terms he uses now. The conversation ends back at the project’s origins, with his decision that the trilogy’s third part will never be made, and the feelings that stay with him about leaving Jackie’s story suspended after part two.

Alex Mechanik worked side by side with wife Samy Burch on short films before the two broke through with ‘May December,’ and his debut feature ‘This Is the One They’ll Remember Me By’ finds him directing alone, with Samy credited for the story. He recounts how they divided the early groundwork and why this was the project to steer himself. The role of Robin Beck was imagined for his friend O-Lan Jones, a character actress long overdue for a showcase, and he describes when she learned about it and how it changed the character.
Instead of a locked script, Alex wrote a skeletal outline that left the cast room to riff, a looseness inspired by his love of improvised television comedy, and he says just how bare that outline was on day one. Keith Carradine, Ray Wise, Aidy Bryant, and Charles Melton all play themselves, and he marks the boundary between poking fun at their public images and keeping them inside Robin’s reality. Cinematographer Lance Bangs lends the convention scenes the immediacy of nonfiction, and Alex explains how far that raw feel went before the film eased toward conventional storytelling, along with how grainy tape footage from Robin’s earlier career was shaped into her own recollections.
Umberto Smerilli’s sweeping orchestral music plays against that imagery, and Alex answers whether it mirrors the grandeur Robin imagines for her own life or gently teases the awkwardness around her. He also explains why the story follows someone who has already tasted fame instead of a newcomer fighting to be noticed. The closing tribute to Paul Bartel and Jackie Burch carries personal weight for a film so preoccupied with being remembered and loving the work.
(Photo credit: Lance Bangs)

Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson adapt Ursula Wills-Jones’ fable ‘The Wicker Husband,’ a story that already lived as prose and as a London stage production, into the feature ‘Wicker,’ and they name what about it demanded the screen. As writing and directing partners, they compare how their dynamic shifts between the drafting table and a busy set, and how stepping up from their debut ‘Save Yourselves!’ to a larger crew changed the way they work together.
Ambition runs through both of their films, and with ‘Wicker’ it presses against the limits of what a single shooting day can hold. They describe where vision and logistics collide and which creative element they protect first when time runs short. Alexander Skarsgård plays the title figure inside a practical suit built by Weta Workshop, a costume that restricted his movement, and they explain how it altered their notes, blocking, and framing of his gaze while his performance stayed rooted in feeling.
Cinematographer Lol Crawley, a past guest on the show, shot ‘Wicker’ in the window between ‘The Brutalist’ and Damien Chazelle’s next picture, and the directors share what they believe drew him to their world, along with how his precise single camera instincts shaped their coverage of each scene. Looking across their work, from an original debut to an adaptation, they also speak to the pull of odd premises anchored in real human bonds, and the spark that tells them a story deserves their time.
(Photos: Courtesy of Black Bear)