First Time Go

We're so accustomed to the tropes of addiction related films. Recovery is inspiration. There's a happy ending. The story is over when your protagonist comes out of therapy. As I listen to this conversation, it even invades how we talk to the directors of films.

But my guest today, Aaron Strand, director of the brilliant film WITHDRAWAL (2025), thinks about all of these things differently: he hates addiction films because normally directors try to "inflict pain on people for them to act correctly." He encourages filmmakers to "clean up their side of the street before starting to tell...

The most Irish friendly film podcast is back with another Irish guest, director Damian McCann, who brings a host of firsts with him -- first Irish language film made in Northern Ireland; first guy to be doing the laundry when he found out that his film, AONTAS (2025), is Ireland's nominee for the 2027 Oscar for Best International Film; and first guy to ask his parents about how to rob a bank and then use that information to make a banger of a heist film.

On the last part: maybe. Hopefully. This is fantastic filmmaking that moves the bar...

Not a pop psychology show, but if it was, I'd explore more with my guest, writer and director Paula González-Nasser of the brilliant film THE SCOUT (2025), how she made her first feature about a job she didn't care for. I can't imagine a scenario where she was working as a location scout, and thought, this is my first feature film.

And yet.

THE SCOUT works brilliantly as a observational movie about the little seen lives of location scouts, even though their work has an outsized influence on the sets that you see in films. S...

My guest today, director Mylissa Fitzsimmons, previously released two features -- EVERYTHING IN THE END (2021) and THE LONG RUN (2025) -- and never got a premiere. She suffered from burnout of the excruciating process of making these brilliant films. And yet:

here she is in 2026 with MACKENZIE (2026), opening at Film Fest Oldenburg this year. What does that say about perseverance? Resilience? A never quit attitude and the ability to keep going on even though this is really, really, fucking really hard?

I think it says everything. I'm so motivated hearing her story and so excited for...

Expectations are good in a lot of ways. They hold us to a standard and promote accountability. But they can also be creatively limiting. For actor and executive producer Glen Steele of the film INFINITELY DENSE, who you heard in the intro, he took the shackles off the word expectation and made his art, giving the middle finger to age or any other perceived limitation.

INFINITELY DENSE is having its market screening at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 16th, 2026. If you have the ability to go, you should. It's a near-realistic sci-fi look at what...

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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: RYE LANE (2023)

Director: Raine Allen Miller

SYNOPSIS

Two twenty-somethings reeling from bad breakups spend an eventful day wandering South London, helping each other face their nightmare exes and rediscovering the possibility of romance.

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When you normally see a series like HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD, put together by my guest, filmmaker Dylan Mulick (and the team at World Within Studios), the tendency is to brush it off as do-gooders doing good things. Where is the conflict in that? A lot of great documentaries aren't seen because of these assumptions.

Dylan turns the usual tropes of the series upside down in so many ways by going there: inner city Chicago; the Bahamas; wherever there is actual conflict for people who are looking to change...

One of the most fascinating things I've learned about in conducting interviews are how top awards can end up meaning -- nothing.

Think back -- can you name who won the Oscar for best documentary short five years ago? Two years ago?

So often, it doesn't show a noticeable trajectory change in the filmmakers' careers. That's not true of my guest today, Orlando von Einsiedel, whose film, THE CYCLE OF LOVE (2025) opened in New York on August 28th and later in September for the rest of the country, has continually built on his success through...

Every Sunday, I'll post a quick video -- and podcast -- about an indie film from at least a year ago. Today's film: EVELYN (2018).

Director: Orlando von Einsiedel

SYNOPSIS

When a 22-year-old kills himself, his three siblings try to bury their pain. Ten years later, they go on a hiking trip and seek out the places he liked to walk in the English countryside, allowing them to contemplate their brother's life.

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If you are staying up till 1030 pm to talk with me from Milan, Italy, well, I'm going to be grateful no matter what.

But even better if your film is truly exceptional. My guest, Ang Geck Geck Priscilla, director of AH GIRL (2026), which premiered at Rotterdam and now screens at the Toronto International Film Festival next month, made a fantastic coming of age story from a child's perspective, cinematically. She wrote a semi-autobiographical story -- 70-80% true -- that her parents haven't even seen. And she's a Singaporean filmmaker making...

It always fascinates me when people with other artistic backgrounds settle on making films. They end up creating an art form that is noticeably different than their peers. My guest, Australian director Peter Skinner, spent five years as a sculptor, and then with the precision that art form requires, turned his focus into making astonishing films like his most recent, TWO UGLY PEOPLE (2025).

It's a hard film to describe but a beautiful one to watch. The impetus for the story of TWO UGLY PEOPLE came in the form of a question: " how do I tell a story ab...

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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: MOON (2009)

Director: Duncan Jones

Cast: Sam Rockwell; Kevin Spacey; Dominique McElligott; Kaya Scodelario

SYNOPSIS

Astronaut Sam Bell's (Sam Rockwell) three-year shift at a lunar mine is finally coming to an end, and he's looking forward to his reunion with his wife (Dominique McElligott) and young daughter. Suddenly, Sam's health takes a drastic turn for the worse. He suffers painful headaches and...

At the risk of sounding corny (and real in a world of AI slop podcast descriptions), let me add a fourth F: Ford. As in Tom Ford. No, not that one -- the cinematographer Tom Ford, who made my favorite film of the year absolutely shine through his work years ago.

What do I mean by that? As we talk about, much of what I love about URCHINS is its lighting, and that came from enduring relationships that Tom built over the years that he brought on for this film. There's a huge lesson in that and...

The story behind URCHINS (2026), a coming of age tale set in the waterways of Florida, distills what is best and what is worst about the modern state of independent film. URCHINS is a dazzling display of cinematography and storytelling at its most compelling: it shows Florida like you've never seen before and the story is told in a very unconventional way without the tropes of the genre.

But: it never made it into a festival. Distributors wondered why it didn't cost more. A Black List critic gave its script a 4. The film doesn't fit neatly into the...

Every Sunday, I'll post a quick video -- and podcast -- about an indie film from at least a year ago. Today's film: JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI (2011)

Director: David Gelb

Cast: Jiro Ono; Masuhiro Yamamoto; Daisuke Nakazama; Harutaki Takahashi

SYNOPSIS

A documentary about an octogenarian sushi master, his two sons, and the tiny restaurant in which they tirelessly work.

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From the looks of it, LEFT-HANDED GIRL (2025) has everything going for it. Fantastic film. Taiwan's 2025 Oscar submission (and widely expected to be a nominee.) Edited and co-written by Sean Baker. A Netflix rollout. But the reality is much more complicated.

This was a 20 year labor of love by my guest, director Shih-Ching Tsou, and we talk about everything related to her career, how her perspective of the film changed after its release, the drawbacks of filming this on an iPhone 13, the pros and cons of going with Netflix, and more.<...

I talk to filmmakers all the time who say things like, I'm reviving the romcom. Or my film is a homage to 1950s Westerns. The statements encompass so many genres but the truth is, most of the time they don't work. It ends up being a facsimile of something great, which isn't good at all.

This is a long way at getting to the point that NIMRODS, opening in theaters on August 14th, is the absolute real deal: a film that will remind you of the GOONIES, as my guest, director Lee Kirk hints at, without trying...

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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: OVERNIGHT (2003)

Directors: Tony Montana; Mark Brian Smith

Cast: Troy Duffy; Harvey Weinstein; Chris Brinker

SYNOPSIS

This documentary follows Troy Duffy, a brash, foul-mouthed bartender whose screenplay for an action film called "Boondock Saints" scores him a generous contract to write and direct the film for Harvey Weinstein at Miramax Studios. Duffy's band, the Brood, is also in the midst of signing...

I'm always on the lookout for original filmmaking to highlight, so if you just look at the objective facts of my guest Yiru Deng's film, TUNNEL VISION (2026), which premiered at LA Shorts International Film Festival on August 4th, 2026, you'll be impressed:

4 minute run time.

Animation with just killer transitions that we find out were painful to draw.

An excitingly original topic that is made to be shown on a screen.

By itself, those are amazing. But then when you hear Yiru speak about what it meant for her mother. who is...

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I couldn't stop laughing during the funniest film of the year, directed by my guest, Elliot Connors. It's called FULL FRONTAL, or if you want to use the full title (and you should), it's I’M GOING FULL FRONTAL FOR MY NYU STUDENT SHORT FILM (2026), streaming today, August 4th, 2026 on NoBudge.

I'd argue getting laughs is the hardest thing to do in independent film so that's why comedies are so relatively rare. And to do it in a short film -- that's a tough sell.

But Elliot has th...

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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: RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (2008)

Director: Jonathan Demme

Screenplay: Jenny Lumet

Stars: Anne Hathaway; Rosemarie DeWitt; Bill Irwin; Debra Winger

SYNOPSIS

A young woman who has been in and out of rehab for the past ten years returns home for the weekend for her sister's wedding

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There's something especially New York about the sentiment of my guest, Anthony Argento, saying, "we're only going to give you what you give us" about film promotion.

And in the best possible sense, that kind of New Yorker attitude is at the heart of the Greenpoint Film Festival, now celebrating its 15th year and 7th under the leadership of Mr. Argento, who started officially in 2020 but worked with the festival for a few years beforehand.

The Greenpoint Film Festival first came on my radar last year when they...

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I imagine there's not a lot of debate out there but here's what I believe: there's nothing worse in the human experience than losing a son or daughter. It violates our understanding of the cycle of life and it forces a unyielding loss amongst the living that can never be taken away.

Any experience so intense can, in the right hands, be channeled to create great art, so I am drawn to stories like STILL LIFE (2026), which is an official selection this year of the HollyShorts Film Festival.

...

Every Sunday, I'll post a quick video -- and podcast -- about an indie film from at least a year ago. Today's film: SHOT CALLER (2017)

Director: Ric Roman Waugh

Written By: Ric Roman Waugh

Stars: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau; Omari Hardwick; Lake Bell; Jon Bernthal

SYNOPSIS

A California stockbroker is arrested and charged for a fatal DUI accident, and on his lawyer's advice, takes a plea deal which sees him sentenced to 16 months in prison. While incarcerated, he becomes involved with a violent white supremacist gang.

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Director Zoe Zhou's film, WE ARE HAPPY FISH (2025), is described as "a nihilistic girl escapes from her family with a robot boy to revive a dead fish", which by itself is interesting and accurate. But it only nibbles at how wild, zany, carefree the film is.

Zoe also pushes back at the idea that film school would ever take the edges off her work. In this film, she does an amazing job blending "surrealism, dark humor, and social commentary", as she states for her goal, and I'll be the first person in line to watch whatever is...

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Director Will Niava's film, JAZZ INFERNAL (2025), is showing on July 23rd at the Future of Film Showcase in Toronto. If you're reading this before the date and can go, what are you waiting for? Buy tickets!

It's that incredible, one of the best films I've seen all year. It won a Short Film Jury Award at Sundance last year and very deservedly so. Will is an Ivorian-Ghanaian film director and screenwriter based in Montreal, Quebec. And think about that sentence for a moment: there's few like it in the English...

My guest, Hazel McKibbin, directs films that make top festivals. She edits films that make top festivals. And she makes commercials for brands at the Met Gala. And yet:

Here's Hazel taking on a project about masculinity called LAST MAN UP (2026). Last episode, I praised writer and actor Robert R. Palmer for offering Hazel the opportunity to direct his project, so she deserves equal credit for taking it on. I could see a lesser director -- a lesser person -- saying no, but as she talks about in the episode, she saw it as an opportunity to...

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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: LEFT-HANDED GIRL (2025)

Director: Shih-Ching Tsou

Writers: Shih-Ching Tsou; Sean Baker

Stars: Janel Tsai; Shih-Yuan Ma; Nina Ye

SYNOPSIS

After a single mother and her two daughters return to Taipei to start anew, their fragile family dynamic is tested by debt and a dying patriarch. But when the traditional grandfather strictly forbids the youngest, left-handed granddaughter from using her 'devil...

This is a director's podcast, but the truth is I don't talk with enough actors on here about the struggle they face in indie film. It offers a different lens on how difficult it is to get things made. That's why I'm so happy to be joined by Robert R. Palmer, actor/writer in the film LAST MAN UP (2026), which premiered at the Palm Springs International ShortFest.

When we talked about the plight of actors, and I went through the ways especially an LA-based person had to get ahead -- influencing; writing your own script for a...

Director Daniel Bogran made a film that could be spoiled with just a few words and it would change the entire dynamic of how you watch it. So I'm not going to do that. But the "how" behind him filming THE KILLING MOON ("A wealthy couple's lake vacation takes a sinister, seductive turn when an attractive stranger shows up wounded at their door") is definitely worth a conversation. It had its international premiere at Raindance in London this year.

So is his short film LOW (2019), now streaming on YouTube. You'll see a few familiar actors on LOW...

How many Gen Z filmmakers say, nah, the story I'm feeling is a middle aged undocumented Chinese immigrant cook worried about survival in America. And it's 23 minutes long. You'll hear in almost every professional film course or, ahem, podcast, short films are hard to make or make your film shorter for festivals. And that advice is right, of course.

It's great advice. But it doesn't even begin to speak to what makes art and a singular vision special, and for my guest today, Taiwanese-American filmmaker Benny Chen, his vision is HAND (2026), which premiered at the Cleveland International...

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Happy third anniversary to the pod and I'm so happy to be spending it with Irish filmmaker -- and award-winning ad maker -- Gar O'Rourke.

When people ask about the podcast, the usual first question is, what are your favorite episodes? And I respond with, well, they are all my favorites.

It's true. I wouldn't publish something if I wasn't proud of it, and mainly because of audio or other host-related failures, there's been a handful you'll never get to hear.

But it's also a bit...

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

Director: Sook-Yin Lee

Story by: Chester Brown

Stars: Emily Lê; Andrea Werhun; Dan Beirne

SYNOPSIS

When an introverted cartoonist's girlfriend wants to redefine their relationship, he begins sleeping with sex workers and discovers a new kind of intimacy in the process.

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I love Minnesota; in fact, on June 29th, there I'll be, beside one of its 10,000 lakes, ready for America's 250th birthday. (It's the best place to spend the Fourth.)

It's also a great place for filmmaking so I talk about that with deputy director of Explore Minnesota Film, Nell Lawrenz-Wareham. This was recorded at the beginning of the month so apologies about any confusion about application deadlines.

I am quite certain if we support filmmaking in Minnesota, they'll be back around this time next year.

In this episode, Nell and I talk about:<...

I conclude Tribeca special coverage with one of my favorite films at the festival, CAITY (2026). To say Lindsay Calleran has been through some things to get her debut feature made is underselling it by a lot. Please read this First Person IndieWire article that Lindsay wrote; it gives a lot of important background to her story and how CAITY came to be.

I'm so impressed by so many different things: the resiliency she showed in both losing her father and getting this film made; the journey to sobriety; having the guts to put it all out there...

The Tribeca Film Festival helped organize this tremendous in-person panel with two New York filmmakers: Lily Weisberg, dir of RARE BIRDS (2026) and Maria Sofia Hernandez, dir of LA LUCHA DE LUCÍA (2026).

Recorded on June 9th at Spring Studios, we talk about their incredible films; the challenges of writing different types of characters; what BACKROOMS (2026) and OBSESSION (2025) mean for independent filmmakers; and more.

In this episode, we talk about:

If you're going to make a film about surfing in Senegal, I assume the viewer expects beautiful shots of surfing and the landscape of Dakar, Senegal's capital city. And man, does my guest, filmmaker and director, David Clancy, of NIO KO BOKK or THIS BELONGS TO ALL OF US (2026) deliver.

The film is a valentine to so many things: refugees, Senegal, surfing, and documentary filmmaking itself. David's story of creating the film relies so much on his exciting background, and it was a such a joy to hear about it from his spot now in the Canary...

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Watch STRAIGHT TO HELL On Criterion Channel

Every Sunday, I'll post a quick video -- and podcast -- about an indie film from at least a year ago. Today's film: STRAIGHT TO HELL (1987)

Director: Alex Cox

Writers: Dick Rude; Alex Cox

Stars: Joe Strummer; Dick Rude; Courtney Love

SYNOPSIS

Three bank robbers (Sy Richardson, Joe Strummer, Dick Rude) and a pregnant woman tear up a desert town.

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What a last month or so for Haiti and director Elisee Junior St. Preux's debut feature. Upon its release at the Tribeca Film Festival, THE TROPIC SUN AND HIS EYES (2026) received the Special Jury Mention for Best New Narrative Director alongside rave reviews. It is truly stunning filmmaking, offering both a realistic glimpse of Haiti and an expansive view of fatherhood.

Let's count the ways in which his month just aligns perfectly for this film: Haiti playing Brazil in its second World Cup today (there's special screenings of this film in Atlanta); Father's Day in the United...

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VIA NEGATIVA resonated with me on so many different levels -- as a Catholic; as someone who uses firearms; as a veteran (there's a moment in there, if you've seen it); and most importantly, a lover of truly astonishing filmmaking. Director Hannah Peterson achieved something extraordinary with this film by bringing a novel to life in the best possible way and making you think of life's grand questions without pandering.

The film's log line: "It follows the story of Father Dan who goes on a mythic road trip with a...