Meet the 2011 Sundance Filmmaker

For almost two weeks, indieWIRE has published interviews from 2011 Sundance filmmakers in the event’s competition and NEXT sections. In addition to the 32 full length profiles (links below), iW is profiling four additional filmmakers Thursday, including Andrew Okpeaha MacLean’s On the Ice (U.S. Dramatic Competition), Philip Cox’s “The Bengali Detective” (World Cinema Documentary Competition), Zal Batmanglij’s “Sound of My Voice” (NEXT) and Paddy Considine’s “Tyrannosaur” (World Dramatic Competition).

Soon after the Sundance Film Festival unveiled its 2011 lineup, indieWIRE invited directors with films in the Sundance U.S. Dramatic & Documentary Competitions, as well as the World Dramatic & Documentary Competitions and NEXT section, to submit responses in their own words about their films. indieWIRE has been the place to get to know the Sundance filmmakers ahead of the festival for more than a half-dozen years.

Over 50 in the four sections provided their responses and iW will roll them out daily through the start of the festival later this month.

A snapshot of Thursday’s new featured interviews:

MacLean’s “On the Ice” centers on three friends who go out for a hunt in their northern Alaska town, but one of them dies following a tussle. “We’re probably the only film set in recent history that had to have a guy with an AK47 on watch for polar bears,” observed Maclean about production on the film. “Springtime in Barrow, which is when we filmed, is prime seal hunting season for bears.”

I was searching for a character based film, where a character who could act as a catalyst to allow me to enter into other peoples’ lives. I was looking at lawyers in Russia, psychoanalysts in Mexico and then private detectives in India. Whilst teaching in India I came across the rise in popularity of the private detective through billboards everywhere and hearing from friends who were using them,” noted The Bengali Detective director Philip Cox about his film. His World Cinema doc follows the life of one and his team who investigates counterfeit hair products to a brutal triple murder.

Low budgets are liberating. Movies reflect real life. And real life happens all around us, all the time. And it’s free, noted Sound of My Voice director Zal Batmanglij about his experience making his NEXT section film. His film revolves around a couple who successfully infiltrate a cult.

No tricks, no devices. Before I turned over on this people expected kitchen sink business, improvisations and documentary camera work, Tyrannosaur” director Paddy Considine offered up about her approach to the film. I wanted to make cinema. The documentary approach has been bastardised too much over the years. In actor Considine’s directorial debut, Joseph (Peter Mullan), a tormented, self-destructive man plagued by violence, finds hope of redemption in Hannah (Olivia Colman), a Christian charity-shop worker he meets one day while fleeing an altercation.