Calling the Shots

Elia Kazan represented the American dream. An immigrant who came without anything and who became the Prince of Hollywood and Broadway after World War II. Actor, theater director, filmmaker, writer, he is the founder of Actor’s Studio, a collaborator of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and a director who discovered Marlon Brando and James Dean.

Kogonada looks at how the motif of doors reverberates through Robert Bresson's work.

Stage actress turned film actress and director, Nicole Garcia has worked with the greatest French directors. Mysterious, singular, elegant, she has become a major figure in French cinema, but in her forties, she wanted to tell her own stories. She took a big risk when she was being offered fewer roles as an actress and became a film director.

Jacques Rozier or the fierce, independent itinerary of a filmmaker in perpetual disarray, admired by his peers and pampered by the critics.

Jacques Demy’s ability to enchant audiences was rooted in his personal struggles and doubts as a showman, establishing him as one of French cinema’s greatest artists.

Actors Anne Dorval, Suzanne Clément, Monia Chokri, Gaspard Ulliel, Vincent Cassel, Niels Schneider and Melvil Poupaud discuss working with the young Canadian director Xavier Dolan, who has conquered the hearts of both cinema lovers and prestigious festival juries with his films. To French actress Nathalie Baye, he seems very experienced despite his young age, while Cannes Director Thierry Frémaux says he may be insolent, but everyone agrees he is passionate, creative, a perfectionist and... in a hurry.

Godard by Godard is an archival self-portrait of Jean-Luc Godard. It retraces the unique and unheard-of path, made up of sudden detours and dramatic returns, of a filmmaker who never looks back on his past, never makes the same film twice, and tirelessly pursues his research, in a truly inexhaustible diversity of inspiration. Through Godard’s words, his gaze and his work, the film tells the story of a life of cinema; that of a man who will always demand a lot of himself and his art, to the point of merging with it.

Hour long documentary on the legendary director.

The very first full-length documentary on Scorsese offers an invaluable look at how he was perceived by his colleagues, and himself, in 1977. Catching Scorsese while he was in post-production on New York, New York and editing The Last Waltz, British filmmaker Peter Hayden gets the manically hyper Scorsese to comment on his youth, his relation to his lead characters, and most importantly, his approach to direction. The doc doesn’t quite move at the pace of Scorsese’s revved-up speed-talking, but it does offer some real insight into his productivity in the 1970s, thanks to an impressive array of talking heads. Included are Scorsese’s collaborators Jay Cocks, Mardik Martin, Brian De Palma, Steven Prince (who co-produced this doc), and his mentor John Cassavetes. Also the performers, who discuss his working methods in detail — Jodie Foster, Liza Minnelli, and, of course, Robert De Niro.

Reconstructions of unrealized Hungarian films in cooperation with the greatest Hungarian film directors.