Safdie Brothers Articles
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Following the release of their long-gestating passion project UNCUT GEMS in 2019, Josh and Benny Safdie were faced with the endless possibilities of a wide-open creative future. Rather than dive immediately into development on a new feature, the brothers would make a short detour into the warm familiarity of the short-form medium. 2020 would see…
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Notable Festivals: Telluride, Toronto There’s an old adage taken to heart by any aspiring writer: “write what you know”. It’s simple. Succinct. It works. But I would argue it’s too simple— in an effort to reduce a sentiment down into an easily-digestible buzz-phrase, a crucial nuance has been lost that might otherwise have empowered the…
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OHNEOTRIX POINT NEVER: “THE PURE AND THE DAMNED” (2017) An accompanying pop single for a theatrical release used to be standard practice in Hollywood filmmaking. It still is, to a degree, but the windfall a hit single would provide as an ancillary revenue stream has been greatly diminished by the meager returns of the streaming…
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Notable Festivals: Cannes Halfway through the 2010’s, directors Josh and Benny Safdie were on a slow but steady upwards trajectory, making a tidy name for themselves as makers of daring microbudget films beloved by the elite community of international festival juries. Though any filmmaker would happily glide through this rarefied air, there still exists an…
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Notable Festivals: Venice, SXSW When I was 18, an old friend of my mother’s came to stay overnight at our house. This was no social visit— before this woman arrived, my father, brother and I urgently disposed of every bottle in the liquor cabinet. My mother’s friend was an alcoholic, and this particular night found…
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Directors Josh and Benny Safdie are no strangers to the world of branded content. After all, Josh’s first feature, THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED (2008) was a byproduct of an agreement to produce a short piece for Kate Spade. The medium holds a particular benefit for their unique filmmaking style, devoid as it is of…
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Lebron James. Kobe Bryant. Carmelo Anthony. Lenny Cooke. In an alternate reality, these would all have been household names. For Lenny Cooke, unfortunately, this was not meant to be. It seems inconceivable that a man who can be mentioned in the same breath as these NBA titans never actually played against them as a member…
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The modest success of DADDY LONGLEGS (2009) and the prestige afforded by its Cannes debut wouldn’t quite launch Josh and Benny Safdie’s directing career into the stratosphere, but it would raise their profile significantly. Most filmmakers would leverage the moment to land a big studio film, but even at this relatively early stage in their…
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Notable Festivals: Cannes Award Wins: John Cassavetes Award, Independent Spirit Awards Parenthood is easily one of the most transformative experiences a person could go through. Overnight, one’s priorities — indeed, one’s entire world — radically realigns around the well-being of someone other than themselves. It is unfathomably rewarding and unimaginably challenging in equal measure. Simply…
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Formed in their college heyday at Boston University, the Red Bucket Films collective — comprised of student directors Josh & Benny Safdie, Zachary Treitz, Sam Lisenco and Brett Jutkiewicz — was experiencing the end of the 2000’s as their most prolific era. Like the New Hollywood generation of filmmakers before them, they found a particular…
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The advent of the digital revolution may well prove to be, quite effortlessly, the most destabilizing and transformative movement in the century-long history of cinema. More so than the arrival of home video — or perhaps even the transition of silent films to talkies — the introduction of digital technology into the production-to-exhibition pipeline would…
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For more than a decade, mainstream American cinema has been dominated by snarky supermen in leathery capes and synthetic jumpsuits designed to accentuate absurd muscle masses. Escapist fare rules the day, the natural outcome of an infinite feedback loop where the runaway costs of studio production require a “safe” product that appeals to as wide…