Movie Trailers Trending This Month (Sep. 2020) Sep 1, 2020

These trailers are trending right now. Scroll below for movie titles, release dates, and coming soon movie previews.

Movies Coming Soon

The Trial of the Chicago 7

Dune Release Date: Dec. 18 Distributor: Warner Bros.

Dune won't be out until Dec. 18, but this Denis Villeneuve-directed remake is getting some serious buzz. Check out the brand new trailer below. Rebecca Release Date: Oct. 21 Distributor: Netﬂix

A newlywed arrives at her husband's estate and ﬁnds herself battling the shadow of his ﬁrst wife. Watch the preview for Rebecca below.

No Time to Die Release Date: Nov. 20 Distributor: MGM Studios

When you're done doing your happy dance, go ahead and watch the new trailer for Daniel Craig's ﬁfth and ﬁnal performance as the iconic James Bond. No Time To Die will come out on Nov. 20th.

Ammonite Release Date: Sep. 11 Distributor: Lionsgate

Ammonite is inspired by the life of fossil hunter Mary Anning (played by Kate Winslet) and follows her romantic relationship with a young woman (played Saoirse Ronan). Watch the dramatic preview below.

Tenet Release Date: Sep. 4 Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures

Tenet ﬁnally has a release date of Sep. 4. Watch the all-new trailer for Christopher Nolan's Tenet below.

Antebellum Release Date: Sep. 18 Distributor: Lionsgate

Another highly anticipated ﬁlm is this horrifying-looking movie from Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz. Watch the trailer for Antebellum below. All In: The Fight for Democracy Release Date: Sep. 9 Distributor: Amazon Prime

In anticipation of the 2020 presidential election, All In: The Fight for Democracy peeks into the issue of voter suppression in the United States.

Death on the Nile Release Date: Oct. 23 Distributor: Netﬂix

Watch the trailer below for Death on the Nile, an upcoming murder mystery straight from Netﬂix. Written by Michael Green, it’s based on the 1937 novel of the same name by Agatha Christie.

Eternal Beauty Release Date: Oct. 2 Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films

Sally Hawkins plays Jane, a peculiar character having a breakdown in a chaotic world, where love (both real and imagined) and family relationships collide in touching and humorous ways. Watch the Eternal Beauty trailer below.

The Devil All the Time Release Date: Sep. 16 Distributor: Netﬂix

Based on Donald Ray Pollock’s award-winning novel of the same name, The Devil All the Time features an ensemble cast of Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Jason Clarke, Riley Keough, Sebastian Stan, Eliza Scanlan, and more. Watch the trailer below.

Kajillionaire Release Date: Sep. 18 Distributor: Focus Features

Con artists Theresa (Debra Winger) and Robert (Richard Jenkins) have spent their entire lives training their daughter to swindle, scam, and steal. Now, they’ve convinced a stranger to join their scam, only to have their world shaken up. Watch the Kajillionaire trailer below.

On the Rocks Release Date: October 23 Distributor: A24 / AppleTV+

Laura (Rashida Jones) begins to fear for the worst after her husband is suspiciously busy all the time. So, she turns to her father, played by the one and only Bill Murray, for advice. Watch the trailer for On the Rocks below.

Judas and the Black Messiah Release Date: TBD Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures

Chairman Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) was 21 years old when he was assassinated by the FBI — who worked with petty criminal William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanﬁeld) to help them silence him and the Black Panther Party. Watch the intense preview for Judas and the Black Messiah below.

Top Movie Trailers From August, 2020

Netﬂix Party and 5 Other Watch Party Apps

Now Streaming on Peacock You Can Now Watch (Some) Netflix Originals For Free Sep 1, 2020

Forgot your parents’ Netﬂix password? Well, now the streaming service is offering some movies and shows to non-subscribers for free. It’s not a new practice—Netﬂix opened up To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before to U.S. viewers in February (in hopes that they would subscribe to watch the sequel). But this time, 10 titles will be available to viewers globally. What exactly is on the list? On the movie side, there’s Bird Box, Murder Mystery, and the Oscar-nominated The Two Popes. For series viewing, you have Boss Baby: Back in Business, Elite, Grace and Frankie, Love is Blind, Stranger Things, Our Planet, and When They See Us.

Click here to watch free. We don’t yet know how long this will last—or whether titles will rotate in and out—but until then, happy viewing. Original Mulan Passes The Torch Sep 3, 2020

If you’ve ever seen Princess Jasmine or Mulan sing, you’ve heard the voice of Lea Salonga. A singer and actor for over 40 years, Lea has played iconic roles both onscreen and onstage, including in the 1998 animated version of Mulan. This week, purely as a movie fan, she’s gearing up to see her role reprised in Disney’s live-action remake, available for purchase on Disney+ September 4.

“I’m probably going to hole up somewhere in my house with a lot of snacks and plenty of water and I will just be sitting cross-legged, watching,” Lea said. “I’ve been waiting since March 20th to see this movie. I’ve got friends in this movie so I want to be able to cheer and clap, even if it’s just me and my family watching.” And although the ﬁlm wasn’t released in theaters as planned this spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic, “it’s a matter of making the best out of a bad situation,” Lea said. “This is something that’s beyond anybody’s control.” “I want to be able to just take it all in and see all of that Asian beauty and badassery on that TV. I cannot wait.”

Making history at the Tonys

Lea began doing musical theater at 7 years old in her native Philippines. But it was only while she was working on Miss Saigon in London that she ﬁnally decided, “This is really it. I’m not going to be doing anything else in my life.” And she hasn’t looked back.

Lea won the Tony for Leading Actress in a Musical for Miss Saigon on Broadway in 1991, becoming the ﬁrst actress of Asian descent to win the prize. “The Tony Awards were the one award show that I really took interest in. I remember watching Chita Rivera. I remember watching Jennifer Holliday. Those two left a mark,” she recalled. “So when I was sitting at the Tony Awards with my brother, who was my date the year I won, I couldn’t believe we were there and that we were actually going to get to see it a few feet in front of us. The impact was nuts.”

At the time, Lea said, “I don't know that it really entered my mind that I was representing a woefully underrepresented chunk of the population. But for the show to run for 10 years on Broadway and more than 10 years in London, and for there to be a touring production going all over the United States ... It means that more and more Asian actors can look to doing theater as a viable livelihood option. You don’t have to be a doctor or a lawyer.”

Lea grew up watching Disney musicals, like The Rescuers, and listening to storybooks on tape. “Instead of my mom reading me a bedtime story, she’d turn on the Disney storybook tapes. Some of them got eaten up by the machine. Dumbo and Cinderella survived. I think Pinocchio got eaten up, but I do remember seeing the ﬁlm anyway, so it’s ﬁne.”

She closely followed the Disney princess renaissance, beginning with The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Then it was Aladdin, which marked Lea’s Disney break. “It was a sweet beginning,” she said. “The casting director, Albert Tavares, left a really nice note at the stage door of the Broadway theater [during Miss Saigon] that said, ‘We’ve been trying to look for you. Can you please give me a call?’ I got to meet him at the audition, but he passed away a few months after that.”

Also present at her audition: Alan Menken and Tim Rice. “Those two do not leave my memory so p ese a e aud o : a Me e a d ce. ose wo do o eave y e o y because of who they are to many musical theater people. I mean, Alan Menken—nevermind Mermaid and Belle. I’m looking at Little Shop of Horrors in front of me! And with Tim Rice, it’s Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita.”

She sang “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid: “Of course, I had to sing something that sounded Disney princessy.”

“And the next time that I sang for anybody, it was for a recording of the demo of ‘A Whole New World.’ So I guess I got the job,” she said.

Becoming a warrior princess

Lea’s Mulan audition took place in her native Manila. At the time, the ﬁlm was going to be written by Stephen Schwartz, so she sang a song he had composed, “Written in Stone,” which didn’t end up making it into the ﬁnal version.

As with her Miss Saigon Tony win, Lea didn’t see the monumental impact a princess like this would have until after the fact. “I started to see a lot of young girls, Asian or otherwise, dressing up in this costume for Halloween. That’s when I realized, ‘Okay. It’s not just that she’s Asian. It's that she’s Asian and a warrior.’”

“Mulan” (1998) “She’s an Asian that can ﬁght and defend herself and speak up for herself and is somebody who was always very headstrong and stubborn—something that we want our young girls to look at and be. That people of different races were looking to this Asian girl for that, that’s the part that got me.”

Mulan for a new generation

The Niki Caro-directed live-action feature, Lea believes, will have this same impact all over again “because you’re actually seeing a ﬂesh-and-blood human doing this. It’s not a cartoon anymore, where everything is possible at the end of an artist’s pen or paintbrush. It’s going to feel different.”

Sword fights on rooftops are nothing new, Lea concedes, pointing to the fight sequences in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and a slew of Hong Kong action films. But, as a moviegoer, “It’s going to be very exciting to see that in a story that originally came to light in 1998. Here we are 22 years later, in a new form. There’s going to be a familiarity to it, but there’s also going to be something new. Gong Li’s role did not exist in 1998, but here she is. And it’s Gong Li so I cannot wait to see what she’s going to do.”

Li will play a shapeshifting witch in the remake. As far as other departures from the original, Mulan (played by Liu Yifei) now has a sister and her love interest isn’t her commander but one of her peers. Commander Tung is played by Donnie Yen. Tzi Ma, Rosalind Chao, and Hoon Lee—some of whom Lea collaborated with on Flower Drum Song on Broadway—also star. “I get to cheer on the people that I know,” Lea said. “So I’m just waiting for my friend to come in on horseback and call out the names of the men that need to enlist in the army. I’m like, ‘Yes, oh my God, you!’”

“I’m really excited to see familiar faces as well as new faces that I think are going to be movie stars for this generation—not just in their native countries, but everywhere.”

d ll h f h f f l d h l f h l b h Lea doesn’t recall much of the fanfare leading to the release of the original, but she recognizes how that movie paved the way for this one.

“It’s taking a story that’s already existed. There’s a lot of good fortune and goodwill because Mulan is such a beloved character. And I think that she is beloved not only by people of color, but by anyone that recognizes a woman who has been told that there are things that she cannot do.”

Lessons from Mulan—and her mother

The lesson Lea hopes young women take away from the story is “that their destiny really lies in their own hands. That it’s up to you to make the decisions, to take the reins and run with it.”

She credits her mother, a homemaker and her manager, with teaching her this from a young age. “She did not allow herself or either of her children to exist at the whims of the so-called man of the house,” Lea said. “She was not going to live that way, which is something to really admire.”

Those traits are ones she appreciates in Mulan and she’s excited to see them once again. “I look at this character on the screen as the 20-something woman who sang for her and go, ‘Oh my God, I look like her and she looks like me. And I gave her her singing voice.’ It’s emotional. I get choked up thinking about it.”

“And now, my daughter is going to be able to look at this and think to herself, ‘Oh my gosh, I look like her. She looks like me.’”

“I think a lot of Asian actors and a lot of actors of color have been pushing for greater representation, but Mulan is getting it in a big-budget action-drama ﬁlm that a generation of Asian performers will be able to look at and be like, ‘Wow, it happened in my lifetime.’”

“And for me, personally, it didn’t just happen once. It’s happening twice. I got to be part of the ﬁrst one. And now I get to be in the audience with a bowl of popcorn for this second one.” What’s On Our Bookshelf Sep 4, 2020

Yes, we love movies, but we also love books about movies and the people who make them. Here are six picks to add to your reading list, starting with biographies:

The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando It’s strange to call Marlon Brando an underachiever. Brando won two Oscars, was nominated for six more, and gave some of the most memorable performances ever committed to ﬁlm. Having studied the Stanislavski style of acting with Stella Adler, he helped popularize method acting and inspired a generation of talents, such as his future neighbor Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro. Yet, he loathed acting, derided the profession, and received little fulﬁllment from it.

Brando’s career was one of ups and downs. After experiencing incredible success in the ’50s, he had a decade-long slump of critical and commercial failures in the ’60s and began to see acting simply as a way to make money. It wasn’t until the ’70s, beginning with The Godfather, that he began to take on roles worthy of his talents again.

The Contender by William J. Mann tells the full story of Marlon Brando, the complicated and enigmatic man from Nebraska who became one of the greatest actors of all time.

More on The Queens of Animation here.

Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen

Was 1999 really the best year for movies? Fight Club, Election, The Matrix, Ofﬁce Space, The Sixth Sense, The Best Man … Okay, maybe Brian Raftery has a point.

With the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the shooting at Columbine High and Y2K all looming large in the American consciousness, Raftery takes readers through the productions of 30- plus titles, exploring how ﬁlmmakers responded to the moment and how they brought their movies to the screen. Be sure to clear your schedule after reading—you’ll want to revisit old favorites or add new ﬁlms to your watchlist.

More on Best. Movie. Year. Ever. here. Color Theory Goes To The Movies Sep 10, 2020

Back in 2015, there weren’t many Instagram accounts exclusively for ﬁlm fans. So Kalki Janardhanan decided to start his own. Today, Cinema Magic—which shares movie stills, audition tapes, and the like—is up to 2.7 million followers and has since spawned a new, more nuanced one: Color Palette Cinema.

From his hometown in the Italian Alps, Kalki started Cinema Magic as a place to talk about movies with strangers. As the account grew, he said, “it became quite impossible to have meaningful conversations.” That’s when he started digging for fun trivia and behind-the- scenes content that most people don’t see and posing questions for his followers to discuss in the comments. “That’s what I actually ﬁnd more interesting than just saying what I think about a movie,” he added.

See also: The most visually striking ﬁlms, according to Kalki Posts usually come from musings about movies he’s watched. Last month, after taking in The Lighthouse, Kalki shared a roundup of scenes where the actors don’t blink. He quickly found on IMDb that “the director said that Willem Dafoe didn’t blink for quite a while, almost two minutes,” Kalki said. “When you watch a ﬁlm, you’re just watching. You’re involved and you don’t read the small details, like when a character doesn’t blink.”

Kalki became interested in movies at 18 years old, just as he was entering university to study food science. Now, Cinema Magic and Color Palette Cinema are his full-time occupation. The two accounts offer up wildly different ways to appreciate movies. While Cinema Magic dishes trivia, Color Palette Cinema invites you to look at the different elements that go into making a movie.

“Cinema Magic was focused a lot on actors and directors and the people in the spotlight,” Kalki said. “I wanted to create a page that focused more on all those people that were not in the spotlight: costume designers, production designers. Their work is very, very important and [Instagram’s] format works really well to show people that, in every scene, there’s a lot of work that people put in, and the actor is just one of the elements.” “Amélie” (2001)

We don’t often think actively about what goes into the making of every scene—that’s part of the magic of moviemaking. But when you’re given a frame without context, Kalki said, you quickly realize that “everything is there for a reason. I feel like I don’t really need to explain anything in the caption because it’s quite self-explanatory, I hope.”

Color Palette Cinema takes shots from different movies and pulls out signiﬁcant colors into a row below the image. The selection usually comes from movies Kalki has seen (he watches a movie a day), but they’re also drawn from fan requests. From there, he ﬁnds high-quality screen grabs and creates a palette on Photoshop. “With the eyedropper, I pick the colors and color the rectangles,” he said. “It’s actually quite easy.”

“Blade Runner 2049” (2017) “If you already watched the ﬁlm and then you see a post, you can remember how you felt when you watched it,” Kalki said. “So you can connect that feeling to what you’re seeing and you realize why, maybe, they used certain colors.”

He’s very intentional about not captioning his posts, instead just including the relevant ﬁlm credits. “People can make up their own minds of what they’re seeing with this format,” he said.

This is part of the reason that Color Palette Cinema appeals to a wide audience. Creatives who are not necessarily in ﬁlm ﬂock to the page for inspiration. “I get a lot of messages from people that use this page as a source of inspiration for whatever they do, like fashion,” he said.

“Color has a strong psychological effect not only on humans, but on animals. Different colors have different meanings. Some animals see a very speciﬁc color and are attracted to it, for example, and the same goes for humans. We are not aware of it all the time. It’s an instinct almost.”

In cinema, color is part of a vast toolkit used to convey emotion to the audience. Take Paris, Texas for example, one of Kalki’s favorite movies ever. “That ﬁlm uses color in a very, very calculated way. You can really tell that the ﬁlmmaker thought about every frame and the composition was very precise.” “Paris, Texas” (1984)

In it, director Wim Wenders uses a lot green, red, white, and blue. “Most of the time, blue, red, and white are together in the frame—the colors of America, of family and a positive environment,” Kalki noted. Green, whether it comes in the form of green light or grass, “represents the loneliness.”

In the ﬁlm, a man named Travis (played by Harry Dean Stanton) wanders the desert alone for four years. With him, we catch many glimpses of green. After he reemerges, he has to learn how to reconnect with society and his family, including his child. “When you see the kid, who’s been with his uncle all this time, you see a lot reds, blues, and whites. There’s a big positive feeling.”

Take a look at some more of Kalki’s Color Palette Cinema creations: “In the Mood for Love” (2000) “BlacKkKlansman” (2018)

“The Master” (2012) Car Crashes, Gun Battles, Epic Fight Scenes Sep 16, 2020

Sisters Heidi and Renae Moneymaker are dressed in ﬂoor-length, formal gowns—Heidi in red, Renae in white—at a swanky mansion party. Their hair is done. Their heels are high. A ﬁght breaks out and suddenly Heidi tackles her sister over a balcony railing, sending both women crashing onto a DJ booth below.

Then the director of Furious 7 yells, “Cut!” and the Moneymaker sisters smile at each other, knowing they nailed the stunt.

Watching the ﬁlm, it looks like actresses Michelle Rodriguez and Ronda Rousey are throwing down, but it’s really Heidi and Renae executing the moves and taking the fall.

Fight sequences, gun battles, car crashes, and high falls bring heart-pounding action to the big screen, but the faces of the women doing this dangerous work are often unseen—until now. Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story, a new documentary premiering on digital platforms Sept. 22, pulls back the curtain on the daring athletes behind ﬁlm and television’s most thrilling scenes, from Wonder Woman and Charlie’s Angels in the ’70s to Captain Marvel and Black Widow today.

Behind the scenes of “Stuntwomen” (2020)

“A lot of boys grow up jumping off things and thinking it’s funny to get hit by cars and things like that,” Heidi Moneymaker said. “So it’s a lot more of a boy’s personality to go into this industry, whereas for a female, you have to think a little bit differently.”

The Moneymaker sisters got into stunt work through gymnastics. As a kid, Heidi was always jumping off her bunk bed, trying to reach the desk or dresser. Her parents enrolled her in gymnastics as a way to channel her energy. Renae followed her older sister into the sport— both were collegiate competitors—and into the stunt world. Falling off the bars and high beam turns out to be great training for a stunt performer.

“You don’t get to be a high-level gymnast and do multiple ﬂips on a four-inch beam without crashing a lot,” Renae Moneymaker said.

Most stunt performers working today have a gymnastics or martial arts background. Stuntwoman turned director Melissa R Stubbs advises those interested in the industry to learn Stuntwoman-turned-director Melissa R. Stubbs advises those interested in the industry to learn a variety of martial arts: “Not one style, but all styles,” she said. “I call it ﬁlm fu.”

Fight choreography and action scenes have become more stylized over the years. But in the 1970s and ’80s, athletic ability and a daring attitude were the only prerequisites.

Growing up with ﬁve older brothers, Melissa was a born risk-taker.

“I was always the ﬁrst one who volunteered to try something,” she said. “I was the one who was put in a sleeping bag and pushed down the stairs.”

She remembers watching TV shows like The Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman and telling her dad, “I want to do that.”

“I had no interest in being an actress,” Melissa said. “I didn’t want to do the talking or the love scenes or the crying. I wanted to do the cool stuff.”

A stint as an extra on Rocky IV eventually led to her ﬁrst performance opportunity in 1987.

“I got killed a bunch of times. I cracked my ribs. And I said, ‘Wow, this is what I’m gonna do,’” Melissa said. “I never looked back and never stopped working.”

But much like Ginger Rogers doing Fred Astaire’s dance moves, only backward and in heels, female stunt performers face challenges men don’t.

Tumbling down a ﬂight of stairs or landing on cement after crashing through a plate-glass window hurts, but women’s costumes usually don’t allow for the kind of padding that can be hidden inside a man’s business suit—or Batman suit. Picture the leotards Lynda Carter or Gal Gadot wear in Wonder Woman—not a lot of places to sneak in covert cushioning.

“I did a T-bone on a motorcycle and a nose-wheelie in a cocktail dress and ballet slippers. No pads,” Melissa said. Melissa R. Stubbs at work in “Suicide Squad”

Heidi Moneymaker, who doubles Scarlett Johansson in the Avengers ﬁlms, has asked for costumes to be made slightly bigger than necessary so she can ﬁt some padding inside. She also has small hip pads she can slip under even the slinkiest dress.

The high-heel issue is also real—and poses a serious risk for ankle and knee injuries. Renae Moneymaker, who doubles Brie Larson in Captain Marvel and Margot Robbie in Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, said she consults with costume designers early in the process to request a wedge shoe or lower heel instead of a spiked stiletto.

Stuntwoman Sharlene Royer, whose credits include X-Men: Days of Future Past and Dolemite Is My Name, recalled a stunt requiring a 60-foot descent on a wire and landing on a hard ﬂoor in high heels.

“I said, ‘No—I’m going to bust my ankle!’” she said. The stunt coordinator supported her request for different shoes.

Regardless of the outﬁt and footwear, injuries are part of stunt work. There’s no way to practice falling without actually falling; no way to simulate getting hit by a car without actually getting hit.

“We’re really doing that stuff,” Renae Moneymaker y g y said. “There’s real fire. Those are real explosions. We’re really flipping a car or flipping through the air.”

Sharlene fell off a horse and broke her wrist while doubling for Paula Patton on Warcraft, then got back up—literally got back on the horse—and continued working.

“I just taped it up like there was no tomorrow,” Sharlene said. “I had the makeup guy paint the tape the same color as my skin so no one knew about it.”

Stunt performers typically train year-round so they’ll be ready when a project comes up. Besides boxing, running, weight training and acrobatics, there’s stunt-speciﬁc vehicle training: learning to drift a car or slide a motorcycle, then stop on a mark.

Heidi Moneymaker’s favorite onscreen trick was rolling a car in the 2013 ﬁlm The Host.

“It was the most terrifying and most thrilling, amazing stunt I’ve ever done,” she said. “In the last few years, I’ve done some really cool car work. I’m into driving now for sure.”

Sharlene, too, added driving to her skill set. She bought her own slide car, had a mechanic install an emergency brake and practices between projects.

“I got myself a bunch of tires and a bunch of cones and there’s a parking lot I go to, especially when it’s raining, to save my tires,” she said.

Next, she took on motorcycles and dirt bikes.

“I bought myself a supermoto and did the same thing with the supermoto that I did with the car: set up cones and practice my precision with it,” she said. “There’s a lot you have to do on your own.”

Despite extensive training on par with the guys, female stunt performers still face discrimination. Just as women are outnumbered in nearly all aspects of ﬁlmmaking, they’ve yet to achieve parity in stunt work.

Even crowd scenes are still disproportionately male, Sharlene noted. “As a woman, you have to push all the time,” she said. “You have to remind them that, yeah, you could have some women in the crowd. It’s our responsibility to remind them about real life.”

As TV and ﬁlm casts become more diverse and more women are cast as action stars, there are more opportunities for female stunt performers of different ethnicities and body types.

“Twenty years ago, it was very rare that you had a lead with an ethnicity you could visually see,” said Sharlene, whose first stunt-performance opportunity came when a director needed a double for Rosario Dawson. “That’s why, in Montreal back then, it was difficult to find a Black stuntwoman or a Latina stuntwoman—there were none!”

It’s still a challenge for female stunt performers to move up in the industry. The natural evolution for stunt performers is to become stunt coordinators, action designers, and directors—jobs held almost exclusively by men.

“It’s changing, but there were no female stunt coordinators and it was a male-dominated thing,” said Melissa. “Women in that role were not respected. It was like having a female quarterback on an NFL team.”

She made the transition after years of hard training and a few serious injuries. Royer and the Moneymakers are charting a similar course. Renae (left) and Heidi Moneymaker (right) on the set of “Captain Marvel”

“It’s hard for me still to think about not performing, because I’m still ﬂipping around and doing crazy stuff,” said Heidi, 42. “But it’s very important—I’m getting to the age where, if I’m going to do this, I need to move up and on.”

Sharlene continues to perform, but she recently began working as an assistant stunt coordinator as well.

“The reason you want to transition is because you’ve been hard on your body for so many years, and at some point you want to give it a break, like any professional athlete,” she said.

Melissa has been designing action sequences and assistant directing for more than 20 years. She joined the Academy as a member-at-large in 2007 and is among those pushing for a dedicated branch for the artists who create and execute stunts.

“We’re an extension of the director, to help realize their vision and then elaborate on it with our expertise,” she said. “We’re not just the people who fall down stairs and get hit by cars.”

Indeed, the stunt performer’s job is to contribute to a character and further a storyline through eye-popping action.

“Stunt performers—people think they’re superheroes and they’re indestructible, but they’re not. They’re sensitive people who have trained their asses off to be prepared for those moments,” Melissa said. “They get hurt, they get hurt bad, and they don’t say a word. They go home and ice their knees and ice their backs and show up to work the next day and do it all over again. There’s some magic to the movies with visual effects and wires, but those are real people doing those things with passion and hard work.” 8 Uncommon Streaming Services Sep 17, 2020

It’s really nothing to be ashamed of if, after six months and counting of various stages of lockdown, you’ve explored every nook and cranny of Netﬂix. And Amazon Prime. And Hulu and Disney+ and HBO Max and AppleTV+. It’s happened to the best of us.

We’re happy to report that—in addition to upcoming new releases on those major platforms— there are many, more niche streaming services bursting with content worth watching. So, if you have a spare $15 (and spare batteries for your soon-to-die TV remote), try out a few of these less-frequented streamers below. And not to worry ... almost all offer free trials!

DAFilms Teamwork makes the dream work. At doc-centric streaming service DAFilms, that much is clear. The platform is powered by Doc Alliance, a remarkable and clearly fruitful creative partnership between seven European documentary festivals. Since launching in 2009, programmers from those orgs have pumped nearly 2,000 titles—often fresh off festival debuts—onto the platform. The resulting catalog and accompanying essays are rich, expert, and global.

GET STARTED WITH: Mur Murs (Agnès Varda, 1981) COST: $6.99/month

MUBI If you’re a movie buff, it’s likely you’ve already heard of (and subscribe to) MUBI. But we’ll never miss a chance to sing its praises, just in case anyone isn’t yet privy. A fantastic remedy to the all-too-common content overload, MUBI supplies a rotating library of only 30 titles: a new, first-rate film is added each day, but is cycled out a month later. We kind of love the disciplined approach—the threat of a worthy title expiring helps us avoid procrastination. For cinephiles, the service is as quintessential as they come. A subscription here feels a bit like life- long enrollment in film school, in a good way.

GET STARTED WITH: In My Room (Mati Diop, 2020) COST: $10.99/month

Fearless Some streamers highlight diverse titles in their catalog with Pride or Black History month collections. But Fearless, built on “unapologetic inclusivity,” puts content for (and from) underrepresented groups front-and-center all year long. Dive into all types of diverse titles, but most notable is the platform’s deep reserve of LGBTQ+ indies and shorts.

GET STARTED WITH: From Jappan (Raj Trivedi, 2016) COST: $7.99/month

Means TV Another streaming service built on principles is newcomer Means TV. Launched only at the beginning of 2020, the streaming service declares a radical mission in a Netﬂix- and Amazon-dominated industry: it is anti-capitalist, and exists to empower the working class. So … what does this look like? Practically speaking, “no advertisements or product placements … no corporate backers or VC cash.” And creatively speaking, an impressively stacked catalog with themes relevant to everyday people.

GET STARTED WITH: The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (Brett Story, 2016) COST: $10/month kweliTV “Kweli” means “truth” in Swahali, and it’s something that founder DeShuna Spencer felt was missing in mainstream Black entertainment. Too often, the content found on cable and major streamers was U.S.-centric and full of negative stereotypes. So instead, refreshingly, kweliTV aims to reflect the honest, global Black experience. And that it does: shorts and features on kweli (98% of which were screened as official selections at film fests) are from Ghana, Brazil, the UK, Portugal, Mozambique, and Cuba, among others.

GET STARTED WITH: La Playa D.C. (Juan Andrés Arango Garcia, 2012) COST: $5.99/month

Viki What do you do after you’ve blown through all of Bong Joon-ho’s ﬁlms? Get a Viki subscription. Waiting there is not only a mound of classic and indie Korean ﬁlms, but also high- quality hidden gems from China, Japan, and Taiwan.

GET STARTED WITH: A Taxi Driver (Jang Hoon, 2017) COST: $4.99/month

Shout! Factory TV Shout! Factory TV’s catalog might be scrappy and unpredictable, but that’s what we love about it. Without a doubt the go-to for cult classics, it’s ﬁlling the hole in our hearts from months of missed midnight movies at the New Beverly.

GET STARTED WITH: The Wasp Woman (Roger Corman, Jack Hill, 1959) COST: Free with ads, or $2.99/month ad-free

Pantaya Boasting 300+ Spanish-language movies (and many more scripted series, if you’re into that sort of thing), Pantaya seems to be dominating the Latinx corner of the streaming market. Given that we’re always looking for new content from Latinx creators, we’re not complaining. An added bonus: theatrical titles from Pantelion Films, a partner of the company, sometimes release day-and-date on the platform.

GET STARTED WITH: No Manches Frida (Nacho G. Velilla, 2016) COST: $5.99/month Things You Didn't Know — 'Real Women Have Curves' Sep 18, 2020

Real Women Have Curves is "one of the most inﬂuential movies of the 2000s," according to Entertainment Weekly.

We think it's pretty good, too.

Originally written for the stage when she was only 18, playwright Josefina López later adapted it for the big screen (with the help of George LaVoo), and the film was released in 2002. The story of protagonist Ana García (played by now-famous America Ferrera) would go on to become one of the most definitive coming-of-age characters in movie history. We were lucky enough to link up with the cast & crew for our most recent #WatchWithTheAcademy — and learned up some super- interesting stuff.

Here are some things you didn't about the making of Real Women Have Curves and the inspiration behind it. Read on, reader. ,

1. Joseﬁna López wrote 'Real Women Have Curves' at 18.

TWITTER JOSEFINA LOPEZ

Josefina Lopez @JosefinaLopez

Can’t believe I was only 18 when I started writing Real Women Have Curves. I had just left the sewing factory and went to NYC to attend the Intar’s Hispanic Playwrights Workshop and wrote it there at 19. #watchwiththeacademy 4:47 PM · Sep 17, 2020

63 See Josefina Lopez’s other Tweets

2. The budget for the ﬁlm was $3 million.

TWITTER PATRICIA CARDOSO

Patricia Cardoso @PatCardosoFilm

This was an Open Call we had in East LA looking for an actor to play Ana. 5:13 PM · Sep 17, 2020

3. López's family actually worked in a factory like the one in the movie.

TWITTER JOSEFINA LOPEZ

Josefina Lopez @JosefinaLopez

#watchwiththeacademy My Sister opened the sewing factory and my mother worked with her. I gained so much respect for the seamstresses; their work is important. I ironed for hours, it was exhausting work. I have always celebrate the people we now call “Essential workers”.

5:39 PM · Sep 17, 2020

4. Her family also inspired the movie's message. TWITTER JOSEFINA LOPEZ

Josefina Lopez @JosefinaLopez

#WatchWithTheAcademy #realwomenhavecurves #Hbomax My mother would always criticize my weight. It hurt to always be told that I shied lose weight. When I lost weight she then told me I was too thin. I finally yelled at her and told her, “When will I be perfect for you?”

6:02 PM · Sep 17, 2020

5. It would be awesome to sip some beers with George. TWITTER GEORGE LOPEZ

George Lopez @georgelopez

After filming in East LA - Our dressing rooms and trailers were in a vacant lot - we’d all hang around and bring food and buy beer and all stay after we were done shooting - Good Times w/Good People. #WatchwiththeAcademy #realwomanhavecurves #hbomax

6:01 PM · Sep 17, 2020

6. "Telenovela moment" wins the phrase of the day. TWITTER JOSEFINA LOPEZ

Josefina Lopez @JosefinaLopez

#watchwiththeacademy I love this telenovela moment!!! We wrote that scene in the back patio of the house a little before we show it. We made fun on telenovelas - calling it “Los Pobres Lloran Más”

5:31 PM · Sep 17, 2020

7. They had to make Carmen less mean.

TWITTER PATRICIA CARDOSO

Patricia Cardoso @PatCardosoFilm

During test-screenings we got the feedback that Carmen was way too mean. We fixed it by changing the order of the scenes, so the more humorous scenes with Carmen came at the beginning of the film. #WatchwiththeAcademy #realwomanhavecurves #hbomax #realwomanhavecurves #hbomax 6:18 PM · Sep 17, 2020

7 See Patricia Cardoso’s other Tweets

8. The airport location was shot in an ofﬁce building.

TWITTER PATRICIA CARDOSO

Patricia Cardoso @PatCardosoFilm

We created the airport location at our offices downtown LA. #WatchwiththeAcademy #realwomanhavecurves #hbomax 6:21 PM · Sep 17, 2020

25 See Patricia Cardoso’s other Tweets

9. Ana's father was actually a railroad worker (not a gardener).

TWITTER JOSEFINA LOPEZ

Josefina Lopez @JosefinaLopez

#WatchWithTheAcademy #realwomenhavecurves #HBOMAX My father was not a gardener - he was a maintenance worker at Amtrak working with rails. My father was the epitome of hard work and dignity. 5:54 PM · Sep 17, 2020

10. Ana's grandfather's gold cave story was from real life.

TWITTER JOSEFINA LOPEZ

Josefina Lopez @JosefinaLopez

#watchwiththeacademy The grandfather’s story is my real grandfather’s story - he was always looking for the cave of gold in our home state of San Luis Potosí.

5:26 PM · Sep 17, 2020

11. Broadway version is now in development. TWITTER JOSEFINA LOPEZ

Josefina Lopez @JosefinaLopez

The play premiered in San Francisco at the Mission Cultural Center May 21, 1990. It’s incredible that the play has had over 100 productions throughout the country. Can’t wait for the play to open on Broadway. It’s in development now. #watchwiththeacademy

4:55 PM · Sep 17, 2020 In The Trenches With An American Cinema Chain Founder Sep 23, 2020

Tim League Founder

Tim League was working as a mechanical engineer for Shell Oil in Bakersﬁeld, California when, one day on his way to work, he came across a “For Lease” sign at a 1940s movie theater. “Literally a week later, I signed the lease,” he said. “I was 24 years old and didn’t know anything about the business, other than really loving movies.”

Tim went on to create Alamo Drafthouse, a movie theater chain with 40-plus locations across the country. Below, he discusses his path to Alamo, the ups and downs of 2020, and his dive into home viewing.

As told to A.frame Learning (and failing) on the job

I got a degree in mechanical engineering because I was good at math. But, two years into working for Shell Oil, I realized that I hadn’t put much thought into my career path. I loved movies. I didn’t really love being a facilities engineer for Shell.

It was a beautiful 1940s single-screen, thousand- seat theater called the Tejon Theater—which means either badger or gold ingot, depending on how you use it in a sentence.

The first year of understanding how to run a cinema was really quite challenging. I could have used a few more business classes. My girlfriend at the time [now wife, Karrie] was working at a genetics lab in San Francisco, and as my effort at the theater was failing miserably after a month, I wept and begged and she quit her job and disappointed her parents—like I disappointed mine—by joining me in the endeavor in Bakersfield. Tejon Theatre in Bakersfield, CA

We ran it for two years as an art house theater. We did some classic films and silent films. We did cult movies late at night. Our core was just art-house staples: foreign-language films and American indies. Oftentimes, we would just hope that nobody would come, but inevitably, one couple would, we’d sell two tickets and we’d have to stay open and play the movie. It closed because nobody came. It was a failure.

So we packed up the projector and moved to Austin to start Alamo. Second effort, second iteration.

Moving to Austin

Our ﬁrst order of business was to solve that location, location, location challenge. So after six months, we found a space in the entertainment district in downtown Austin, a smaller facility with 200 seats. We looked at our failure and made some course corrections.

The first night, we did a promotion with a radio station and let the DJs choose a double feature: Raising Arizona and Spinal Tap. We sold out opening night. Day two was terrifying because we didn’t have much cushion, financially. We picked up this pretty mediocre Clint Eastwood thriller called Absolute Power. And again [as in Bakersfield], like four people came —but this time we had a staff. In Bakersfield, it was me and Karrie. We just lived in the theater and didn’t have any employees. There was more on the line here.

Initially, we did second-run $2 movies during the week and cult movies on the weekends, with some classic movies peppered in. We liked building a community around shows that we love. You’re there every single day and you get to know the regulars and build up this kind of family relationship, especially with a single screen. That’s driven a lot of our expansion. In restaurants and entertainment, I seek out local things, but I’m driven by this idea that the larger we can become at Alamo, the more we can support ﬁlmmakers that we love, and in particular, independent, small foreign-language ﬁlms.

These competing principles are the basis for developing local social media, and having a local community liaison and creative manager that are the personality and spirit of every theater. The theater in Raleigh is a reﬂection of the creative team in Raleigh and the theater in Brooklyn, the same. And so, the construct of Alamo is the same, but it’s more of a reﬂection of the local personalities. p

A year we never imagined

As [the coronavirus] was developing in China, in my mind, I was sort of downplaying what could happen if it came to the United States. “Here’s the worst case scenario,” I thought—and we’re so far beyond the worst case scenario.

It’s been a crazy year. We only have 15 of our 41 theaters open now. And our goal during this time, at 25 percent capacity reopened, is not to hemorrhage money. It’s to try to break even without considering rent expense. We’re still in this mode of “hunker down and survive.” All that I just mentioned about local advantages—everybody’s been furloughed, so we are doing uniform programming in this down period.

There are still a couple of folks that do some local programming, but we’re largely in unison so that we can try to break even and then reemerge. I think the only sort of positive thing about it is that you don’t often get the opportunity in regular business to pause and to deconstruct and rebuild. We’re trying to be more efﬁcient. We’re trying to look at how we can be better at promotion and supporting ﬁlms that we do love across a bigger footprint.

Our core community understands the difficulty of the situation. We have a subscription service we love called Season Pass that’s been really popular, and obviously when we were shut down, we automatically turned those subscription programs dormant. But we set up a nonprofit to provide small grants for our furloughed employees, and as one of the refunding mechanisms, anybody that had a Season Pass membership could keep it on and we would flow that money into the nonprofit. And we had a lot of people just do that. They’ll take their $20 a month and contribute to the fund. I think that speaks to the sense of community that has been built. Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX (Photo: Heather Kennedy)

There’s still a small group of us that brainstorm ideas on what we’re going to do for content that’s not Tenet. The movies that we kind of yearn for are fun and escapist movies, so we didn’t want to go too heavy. So we took a lighthearted approach to something that’s entered our lives in a strange, ubiquitous way with masks. It seemed like a fun entry point [for a curated series]. And then the other, “Manipulation of Time,” was what we like to do a lot of times is if there’s a big movie that we’re excited about, and we’re all excited about Tenet. So we show not direct inﬂuences, but in the weeks building up to a big movie, [we show movies to] get yourself geared up by getting into that head space.

I think our biggest differentiator as a company has been that, starting with me and Karrie, our only qualification for being in this is we’re totally obsessed with movies. We love movies to this day. We spent our 20th wedding anniversary at the Lumiere Festival [in Lyon, France]. We still take most of our vacations at film festivals, particularly ones that have really good food. We hire people that are like-minded, that are onboard with the same mission for what we want to do as a company and the films we want to support.

See also: Tim’s top five film festival finds

Enter Alamo on Demand

Alamo on Demand is certainly a COVID project. We were starting to see virtual cinemas pop up and it’s similar to the path for us to build our own subscription program in-house, instead of going with a Movie Pass. We want to have a direct relationship with [customers]. What was going through my mind, and I’ll use Parasite as an example, we went to the mat trying to promote Parasite and build an audience throughout its run. And we did a great job. But we have a lot of data about how people interact with the website and what they see in terms of l d h h ’ b bl b 3 f l h d d trailers, and we saw that there’s probably about 35 percent of people that intended to see Parasite, but never got around to it.

The idea of being a good partner with the studios, with the independent distributors, is to have a relationship for the life of a movie—to get involved at festival time with movies we love, orchestrate a

theatrical plan, and then continue to have an offering for our guests post-theatrical, and sharing in that revenue.

It’s been great. It’s been one of my primary obsessions for the past three months, to build up the library and follow the same ethos of everything that’s on Alamo on Demand: One of our programming team members really loves it and can stand behind it. We have about 700 movies on the platform.

Down the road, I see it as a more substantial part of the business when theaters are open and we have more of that Parasite example, of having a robust theatrical followed by a strong offering in home entertainment where people can transact with us as opposed to a giant behemoth. I’d like to believe that people in our community are going to make that choice provided that our offering is solid.

In select titles, they’ll have our Alamo pre-show as part of the content. There are also quite a few films on the site that are only available on Alamo on Demand, folks that largely went through Fantastic Fest and didn’t ever get U.S. distribution. We’re reaching out to individual filmmakers and building out a library of films that have played the festival before.

It’s a lot of work and it’s not a ton of revenue, but it’s a meaningful collection, especially in the Fantastic Fest category. We’re also reviving some of our old shows from days gone by. Things that we produced in the ’90s and 2000s are going to start popping up into the site for the next few months. So I’m also treating it as something of an archival record of things that we’ve done.

On the subject of home viewing … I didn’t get into this to become a home video guy. I got into this to become a cinema company. I got into this because I love the distraction-free big screen, the energy you have from a crowd. But what I love most is you’re in it. It’s so easy at home to be distracted and to press pause and go to the bathroom or, God forbid, check your email. It’s pure in a cinema. I am going to put all my effort into Alamo on Demand being a success, but not the only success.

Still, I watch a ton of stuff at home. I have a solid home viewing setup that has gone through various iterations over the years. We’ve had projectors, but my TV is currently a ﬂat screen and something I bought ﬁve years ago, so it’s not as big as they can be now. And we always have big sound.

I think people get really fancy about the surround matrix, which I don’t really care that much about. I mean, 5.1 and above is ﬁne. The two elements that are important for me are a really dialed-in and meaty (but not too meaty) subwoofer, which gives you the energy of the sound, and a really good, well-placed center channel. Most serious home entertainment systems of days gone by are left-right centered, and center is an afterthought. And 70 percent of the sound is coming through that center channel. So, invest in a strong sub and really watch some YouTube videos about dialing it in and get a really good center channel.

If you’re going to go projector, then treat it like a cinema room. Have the ability to black out that room because if you don’t, projectors just are so sensitive to getting washed out and that’s really frustrating. That’s why 3D has always failed, because it’s supremely underlit. The two things that kind of pull you out without really realizing it in a movie theater are anemic sound and not enough light on the screen. So, I guess if you’re going to go the projector route, which is the better route, go big. Build a cinema in your house. If you can’t do that, then get as big a ﬂat screen as you can. Hundreds Of Studio Ghibli Movie Stills— For Free Sep 24, 2020

Studio Ghibli fans, this one’s for you. The Japanese animation house is making 400 high-resolution images from its movies available for free download. There’s just one rule. In a handwritten note, Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki wrote, “Please use them freely within the scope of common sense.”

The ﬁlms featured in the collection—with 50 images each—include Best Animated Feature Oscar winner Spirited Away, as well as When Marnie Was There, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, The Wind Rises, From Up on Poppy Hill, The Secret World of Arrietty, Ponyo, and Tales from Earthsea.

Take a look at a few stunning selects below, and view the complete collection here. And in case you missed it, Hayao Miyazaki will be the subject of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ inaugural temporary exhibition. Earlier this month, the museum detailed just how visitors will be transported through the animation giant’s six-decade career via “original imageboards, character designs, storyboards, layouts, backgrounds, posters, and cels, including pieces on public view outside of Japan for the

ﬁrst time, as well as large-scale projections of ﬁlm clips and immersive environments.” More on the exhibition here.

“The Wind Rises” (2013) “When Marnie Was There” (2014)

“From Up on Poppy Hill” (2011)

“Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea” (2008) “The Tale of The Princess Kaguya” (2013) A Personal Search For Art Sep 25, 2020

Petra Costa Director

At the start of 2020, Petra Costa had just come off three intense years of making The Edge of Democracy, her documentary about the sociopolitical divide in Brazil. “We were working seven days a week, 18 hours a day, and didn’t have time to think about anything else,” she said. By the new year, Petra wanted to be surrounded by nature and take a pause for reﬂection. What once seemed impossible soon became the only option thanks to the novel coronavirus. From the Atlantic Forest near São Paulo, where she’s remotely directing a new project, Petra spoke to us about her journey into ﬁlm and her Oscar-nominated doc.

As told to A.frame The personal meets the political

I grew up in the beginning of Brazilian democracy, after 21 years of a brutal military dictatorship that my parents fought against. Social consciousness was always very present in my house. Since I was very little, I had an interest in the theater and the arts, but a feeling that it was a very privileged thing to do in a country that is so unequal.

And that always created a tension inside me. That’s why I went to study theater, then anthropology, and then went into documentary ﬁlmmaking. I wanted to dedicate myself to my personal search for art, but at the same time, there was this political force in tension with it.

Through ﬁlmmaking, I’ve found a path that allows me to both investigate personal matters and also, through the camera, enter into other people’s lives and into the social reality that surrounds me, and explore the tension between both of them. That’s what I’ve been trying to do with the ﬁlms I have made.

I started off trying to make two very social documentaries that were very driven by the content. I didn’t have much relationship to the form. And clearly, they weren’t shaping up as something that was strong. They were just about external realities. It’s like Pina Bausch said: “I’m not interested in how people move, but in what moves people.” I wasn’t getting to what moves people, and to do that, you have to have a relationship to the form. Once I started to learn more and more about the form, I allowed myself to tell stories that were very intimate to me.

My first film [2009’s Undertow Eyes] is about my grandparents, a very intimate exploration. Right after finishing that short film, I had a dream about my sister, where I died. You never die in a dream, so I woke up very shocked, and realized that it wasn’t me who died but actually it was her. This confusion of identities was something that I was very interested in exploring because my sister committed suicide when she was 21, and I was 7. Her suicide was quite taboo, except for my mother, who always spoke to me freely about it.

As I grew up, people started calling me by her name [Elena], or saying that we were similar, and I was haunted by the idea that I would have the same destiny as her, what I call the Ophelia Complex, after Hamlet’s girlfriend in the Shakespeare play. Both Hamlet and Ophelia perceive that there is something sick in the Danish society that surrounds them, and while Hamlet goes out to kill, Ophelia decides to kill herself. So the anger goes inside, which I think is a very feminine way of dealing with pain. As I was coming of age, I felt that quite intensely, that I was drowning in my own emotions, and I think that is what happened with Elena. As I made the film [2012’s Elena, a documentary about her sister, actress Elena Andrade], I found out that was also what happened in my mother’s coming-of-age. So it’s a film about these three women, and about this female difficulty of coming of age. I felt it was still not very explored in cinema, because it’s kind of a quiet, invisible suffering.

The ﬁlm was the result of all these years of coming to terms with all these issues, but I made it in a moment where they were no longer so strong, so it was like looking back at a past life.

Documenting a present life

The idea for The Edge of Democracy came in sensing that there was something intense happening, but not really knowing what it was until I saw The Battle of Chile by Patricio Guzmán. In watching that film, about the coup in Chile in the ’70s, I noticed many things that I was seeing in the streets in Brazil but couldn’t identify—the elites not accepting an elected government and doing everything to bring that government down. It seemed that the end would be the impeachment of our first female president, Dilma Rousseff, but the story kept escalating and escalating until the election of [Jair] Bolsonaro. With that film, the sensation was of vertigo in many ways. We felt the ground had fallen to its limit, and then there was another earthquake and another one and another one.

It was this feeling of bottomless vertigo—and that feeling continues with more and more abuses of the rule of law happening today, and it’s hard to know how far we’re going to go down this rabbit hole that seems to be taking us into the past. “The Edge of Democracy” (2019)

At the ﬁrst protest that I ﬁlmed in March of 2016, I saw more than that. I saw a rise of a fascist hate in the street, like an adoration for everything that was militaristic and hate for anything that seemed progressive, independent of the party.

It’s clear in the scene in the ﬁlm where a boy is holding a sign against Dilma, but he’s wearing red. He has to be escorted out by the police because all the protesters dressed in the Brazilian ﬂag, very nationalistic, want to attack him because he’s wearing red. This level of hatred and intolerance that is so connected to fascism was very clear and frightening and appalling. I had the immediate desire to investigate where that was coming from—and where it would lead us.

It was clear that I needed to make this ﬁlm, and it was a good instinct because from then on, every week something huge would happen. That’s how it felt for three years.

“There’s no democracy.”

Every interview I would do, I would make myself available to that person’s opinions. I interviewed many people that were in favor of the impeachment, and in several instances, I started to feel convinced by them. Then, when I read How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt something clarified for me, which was already my instinct: Whenever someone would defend the impeachment, they would say that it was constitutional. What Levitsky and Ziblatt say so well about how democracies die is that a constitution is a very weak document to protect democracy because it can be so easily manipulated. What protects democracy are two unwritten laws, which are forbearance and mutual respect: knowing that you have at your disposal all the instruments to destroy your opponent, but you won’t do it out of respect. Like in a soccer game. You won’t abuse the tricks you can use for the health of the game, so that people can continue playing a good game, right? That’s what happened with Brazil’s impeachment. In the film, there’s an interview with a woman sitting at the stair of the presidential palace. She’s a cleaning lady at the presidential palace, and for me, it’s the best interview in the film, where she says, “I didn’t vote for her. I didn’t particularly support her. But the way she was kicked out of here makes me not believe in democracy anymore. There’s no democracy.”

It just ripped up our vote. And that’s what led people to vote for Bolsonaro, was someone who was anti-system since the beginning.

After the ﬁlm was released globally by Netﬂix, we would see tweets daily of people in Turkey and India, in Uruguay, in the United States, in the UK, saying this is exactly what’s happening in their country. Brazil is, in a way, an augmented mirror of what is happening in the U.S., because we have fewer checks and balances and our institutions are weaker. The current crisis of democracy is a result of that.