- Chicago History Museum to Premiere “Christian Holder: My Life is Dance” (October 8, 2026)
The Chicago History Museum, in partnership with The Joffrey Ballet, the Chicago International Film Festival, and the Gerald Arpino Foundation, presents the premiere of Christian Holder: My Life Is Dance on Friday, October 30, 2026, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. and Saturday, October 31, 2026, from 12:30 p.m. to 3:00 pm. Directed by Academy Award®-winning producer and director Brigitte Berman, the documentary follows the life and career of the multi-talented Christian Holder, a celebrated Joffrey Company Dancer of the 1970s, up to his death in 2025. The screening takes place at the Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark Street, and includes a Q&A with Berman. Admission is free; RSVP is requested at chicagohistory.org.
Revealing interviews and rare archival dance footage portray the trajectory of Holder’s career in ballet and his extraordinary achievements in choreography, theater, music, and costume design. Over the course of several years, Holder designed costumes for Tina Turner, forging a close friendship with the celebrated singer and dancer that lasted until her death.
Through Holder’s acclaimed autobiographical cabarets—which debuted in New York and London—Holder commands the stage, using the power of musical storytelling to bring his personal story to life. These cabarets form the spine of Christian Holder: My Life Is Dance.
The film places Holder’s life and artistry within the social and political forces of his time, examining the struggle for civil rights and the prejudices he confronted. The film connects Holder’s lauded dance performance of Death in Kurt Jooss’s The Green Table to his opposition to the Vietnam War and explores the devastating impact of the AIDS crisis. Featured participants include former Joffrey Company Artist Trinette Singleton; close friend, dancer and choreographer Margo Sappington; Christian’s cousin Leo Holder; Christian’s aunt and Dance Pioneer Carmen de Lavallade; and The Joffrey Ballet’s The Mary B. Galvin Artistic Director Ashley Wheater MBE, alongside former Joffrey Company Dancer Gary Chryst; Dancer and former artistic director of the Dance Theater of Harlem Virginia Johnson; Lucie Conrad, Kurt Jooss’s granddaughter; Artistic Director and Dancer Desmond Richardson and more.
“I felt deeply honored that Christian Holder entrusted me with his life story,” Berman says in her director’s statement. “I knew the film had to be guided by Christian’s own voice and perspective. His cabaret performances – those luminous, deeply personal, autobiographical works that he acted, sang, spoke, and brought to life became the natural spine of the film…It was essential to me that this film not only portray Christian as an artist and a man, but also clearly place him squarely within the charged political and social currents of his time. Art does not exist in isolation – it collides with injustice, intolerance, fear, and the need for change.”
Seven years in the making, Christian Holder: My Life Is Dance incorporates Holder’s personal archives, including photographs, paintings, drawings of costume designs, home movies, and stunning footage of Christian dancing, along with materials from personal collections contributed by friends and colleagues. The Joffrey Ballet, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Gerald Arpino Foundation, and the Jooss Archives in Germany also contributed important archival materials.
Christian Holder died on February 18, 2025. The documentary spotlights Christian Holder’s voice, spirit, and artistry, offering audiences a rare and personal glimpse into the creative vision, passion, and purpose that drove him.
Christian Holder: My Life Is Dance is directed, written, and researched by Brigitte Berman. Executive producers: Chaz Ebert and Dan Lyon. Producers and editors: Brigitte Berman and Lee Cochran. Original music composed by Ken Myhr.
About Christian Holder
Christian Holder was born June 18, 1949 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and came to London at age 2 with his father, Boscoe Holder, a famous musician, dancer, choreographer, and artist, and his mother, Sheila Holder, who danced and sang with ‘Boscoe Holder and his Caribbean Dancers’. Christian became one of The Joffrey Ballet’s most acclaimed artists during his tenure with the Company from 1966 to 1979 and spent forty-four years in New York before returning to London.
In 1963, Martha Graham offered Holder a scholarship as part of a select group of young dancers, and a year later, at the young age of 15, Christian arrived in New York, where he moved in with his aunt and uncle, Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade. He enrolled at the High School of Performing Arts in New York City, where he was discovered by Robert Joffrey, who invited him to join The Joffrey Ballet. His performances with the Company included the role of Death in a revival of Kurt Jooss’s 1932 deeply haunting antiwar ballet, The Green Table. From 1979 to 1981, Holder appeared as a guest solo dancer with San Francisco Opera, where he also choreographed The Merry Widow and Aida. His choreographic work included Weren’t We Fools? for American Ballet Theatre and Transcendence for Atlanta Ballet. He appeared in repertory theater productions and musicals and designed costumes for ballets, including Margo Sappington’s Toulouse-Lautrec for the Ballet du Capitole in Toulouse, France.
Holder also taught ballet at Steps on Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, and Peridance, as well as for Cedar Lake Dance. After returning to London, England, in 2009, he continued his creative work, writing the book and lyrics for Verse of Fortune, writing and directing Ida Rubinstein: The Final Act, and directing One Man – both staged at the Playground Theatre. In 2024, the limited-edition fine art book Boscoe Holder: Travels in Rhythm, A Life of Art and Dance, written by Christian about his father, Boscoe Holder, was published by David Roe of Rosenstiels.
About Brigitte Berman
Brigitte Berman is an Academy Award®-winning producer, director, editor and writer born in Frankfurt, Germany. She has produced and directed over 200 documentaries – both independently and with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Her films have screened at numerous international film festivals and won many international awards, including the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got.
About The Joffrey Ballet
The Joffrey Ballet is one of the premier dance companies in the world today, with a reputation for boundary-breaking performances for 71 years. The Joffrey repertoire is an extensive collection of all-time classics, modern masterpieces, and original works.
Founded in 1956 by pioneers Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino, the Joffrey remains dedicated to artistic expression, innovation, and first-rate education and engagement programming. The Joffrey Ballet continues to thrive under The Mary B. Galvin Artistic Director Ashley Wheater MBE and President and CEO Greg Cameron.
The Joffrey Ballet is grateful for the support of its 2026–2027 Season Sponsors: The Abbott Fund, Alphawood Foundation Chicago, Daniel and Pamella DeVos Foundation, The Florian Fund, Gallagher, Anne L. Kaplan, Lynda Sue Lane, M.D., and The Women’s Board of The Joffrey Ballet. Season-long sponsorship of the Company Artists is generously made possible by Margot and Josef Lakonishok.
Live Music Sponsors: Sandy and Roger Deromedi, Sage Foundation, and The Marina and Arnold Tatar Fund for Live Music. The Joffrey also acknowledges our Season Partners: ATHLETICO and Chicago Athletic Clubs.
For more information on The Joffrey Ballet and its programs, visit joffrey.org. Connect with the Joffrey on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
- “Cupertino” is a Smart Big Tech Procedural (October 8, 2026)
Movie theaters are currently inundated with major motion pictures that examine and/or indict the behavior of wealthy Silicon Valley leaders, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg (“The Social Reckoning”), Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes (“You Can See Everything”), Elon Musk (Alex Gibney’s “Musk”), and OpenAI’s Sam Altman (“Artificial”). Television is in on the trend, too. In November, Netflix will remind us of the implosion of cryptocurrency fund FTX and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, in “The Altruists.”
On CBS and Paramount+ starting Thursday, there’s “Cupertino,” a broadcast-network procedural that doesn’t zero in on a real-life tech bro, but does raise a lot of sobering questions about the industry currently attempting to cram A.I. down the throats of the global populace.
Created by Michelle and Robert King—the showrunning power couple responsible for “The Good Wife,” “The Good Fight,” “Evil,” “Elsbeth,” and ensuring that CBS still offers quality programming in primetime—the series is a legal drama about an upstart law firm that focuses specifically on clients who want to sue powerful Silicon Valley companies.
“I’m sick of people controlling my fate, and my guess is there are a lot of people out there that feel the same way but don’t have anyone to represent them,” says Michael Price (Mike Colter of “Luke Cage” and “Evil”), an attorney who co-founded, then got edged out of, an extremely successful big tech company called S-Talk.
He’s explaining his reasons for wanting to start an agency that takes on the cases against Magnificent 7-level companies that other firms are too afraid to touch. But he could just as easily be describing this show’s appeal to an American audience frustrated by the unemployment rate, the disproportionate power and wealth of the billionaire class, and the non-stop insistence that everyone get on board with artificial intelligence.
Unlike the other projects mentioned above, “Cupertino” does not focus on the idiosyncrasies/neuroses of a single, perceived “genius.” It is more general in its depiction of big tech, which enables it to feel both timely and, perhaps, more relatable to the average person.
Pictured (L-R): Rachel Keller as Olivia Siffre and Mike Colter as Michael Price. Photo: Elizabeth Fisher/CBS ©2026 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
While there are some key storylines that run throughout the first 10 episodes—the rivalry between Michael and his showboating lawyer father (Joe Morton); another, separate rivalry between Michael and his ex, also an attorney (Renée Elise Goldsberry, who co-starred opposite Colter on “Evil”); and, most importantly, an ongoing narrative about a particularly dangerous form of AI—this is largely a case-of-the-week type of show.
With its quick, plot-driven pacing, “Cupertino” is episodic, mainstream network storytelling that shows, like so much of the Kings’ output, that it’s still possible to make smart, sophisticated, digestible television within that framework.
As Michael, Colter is dignified, pragmatic and, if I’m being honest, not wildly different in demeanor from David, the priest the actor played on “Evil.” But he’s a persuasive lead in both shows, so I’m not going to complain too much about any overlap. While Michael believes in justice and the rule of law, he’s not some anti-capitalist hero who wants to burn down all of Silicon Valley. He simply sees a gap in the marketplace that needs filling. “When you’re in the middle of the ocean, you don’t sell people more water,” he explains to Goldsberry’s Nichole. “You sell them life jackets.”
His partner at the new firm, Olivia Siffre (Rachel Keller), a devout Christian and gifted lawyer who also gets fired from S-Talk after being sexually harassed by the head of the company, is the bleeding heart in this pairing. Keller and Colter have an organic, friendly chemistry that, to the show’s credit, is supportive without being romantic, at least not in these early episodes.
But the standout performances in “Cupertino” come from the two actors who provide the most comedic relief in a drama that doesn’t shy away from poking fun at the always-pitching culture of venture capitalism. Ella Stiller (daughter of Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor) gets a break-out role as Christy Palladino, a third employee who gets fired from S-Talk and becomes the receptionist at Price and Siffre, where she proves to be a fantastic investigator for her attorney bosses.
Christy is particularly adept at tracking down leads and calling in favors from her extensive family of blue-collar workers; after being escorted out of the S-Talk building, she phones her electrician uncle, who proceeds to turn the power on and off in that office and enrage everyone still “lucky” enough to be employed there. Christy knows nothing about technology, but she loves to stick it to the man. Her default expression is resting “you’ve got to be kidding me” face, and Stiller has got that expression down pat.
Pictured (L-R): Ella Stiller as Christy Palladino, Mike Colter as Michael Price, and Rachel Keller as Olivia Siffre. Photo: Elizabeth Fisher/CBS ©2026 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Then there’s Busy Phillips, who’s cast as Natalia Boutella, a key investor in the new firm who also happens to be divorced from a tech executive played by Fisher Stevens who is not Jeff Bezos, but also is totally Jeff Bezos. Natalia is less interested in sticking it to the man than she is in sticking it to that particular man. When he denies that he has gained weight after she tells him he “got fat,” Natalia counters: “You dined with the president, you had a front row seat to that inauguration, you bought a billion-dollar yacht. You got fat.” Phillips utters lines like that as if they’re coated in venom.
(As an added bonus, every time she and Goldsberry appear in the same scene, it’s like a partial “Girls5Eva” reunion, and that alone deserves a fresh designation on Rotten Tomatoes.)
The Kings and co. tackle numerous zeitgeisty tech trends; one episode focuses on a teenager compelled to kill his father by a chatbot, while another, which happens to debut less than a week before the midterms, zeroes in on prediction websites used to manipulate elections.
But “Cupertino” is not a purely anti-A.I. narrative. The episodes also highlight situations where technological assistance can help. In one, Christy gets incredibly frustrated by an A.I. agent she attempts to train by making sure its knowledge of horror movies is up to snuff. (“In which state did ‘The Blair Witch Project‘ take place?” she asks. “Wisconsin,” the agent cheerfully responds. Christy: “No, Maryland, moron.”) But she’s pretty grateful for that moron when he can warn her not to take a sip of a drink that’s been spiked at a bar.
If “Cupertino” has an official position on technology, it’s that it can be very useful, but it desperately needs significant, legally enforceable guardrails. This is an opinion shared by most sentient beings with anything akin to a conscience. This series dares to suggest that there’s a world where guardrails could be put in place, and where the “little guys” in the tech world have a chance to be heard. Maybe that’s a fantasy, but it’s one that’s extremely entertaining to live in for 42 minutes every week.
The first ten episodes of season one were screened in advance for critics. An additional ten episodes are currently in production.
- Ambitious “Control Resonant” Challenges Expectations, Rewards Creativity (October 8, 2026)
Even though people often love to point out this site’s namesake’s opinion on video games, since we began this coverage, we’ve tried to write about where the form intersects with film in cinematic franchises like “Silent Hill,” “Uncharted,” and “Resident Evil.” While playing the absolutely brilliant “Control Resonant,” I kept thinking of some of the most ambitious, game-changing science fiction films of all time, obvious influences like “The Matrix” and “Inception.”
But I also found myself pondering the work of David Lynch. How do “Twin Peaks” and Remedy Entertainment’s masterpiece intersect? It’s in a creator’s willingness to push boundaries, to use the visual language of dreams, and to find emotional grounding in the impossible. Creative Director Mikael Kasurinen has said via the review guide, “We wanted to make something that provokes. Something that feels like nothing you’ve played before.” Mission accomplished.
The excellent “Control” ended with hero Jesse Faden finding her brother Dylan, cleansing him of the infection by the all-powerful Hiss, and leaving him and the place known as The Oldest House under lockdown. Jesse became the Director of the FBC (Federal Bureau of Control) and promised to figure out a way to fix whatever had broken reality in New York City, allowing enemies from an extradimensional space to invade Gotham. Come to think of it: With its reality-shaking vision of Lovecraftian creatures that might literally be from Hell, “Control” has a bit of “Event Horizon” in its DNA, too.
Seven years after the Hiss invaded the Oldest House, Jesse wakes up Dylan and promptly disappears. Dylan becomes the hero of “Resonant,” which is one of many elements that give it a different aesthetic from its predecessor. One thing that takes a bit of getting used to is that this is not “Control 2” for a reason. It is a very different experience, trading the tight location work of the Oldest House for open-world gameplay with multiple zones and far more freedom of choice.
Early in “Resonant,” Dylan aligns with an FBC agent named Zoe de Vera, a companion who speaks to Dylan through the PS5 controller. You work with Zoe to figure out how an event called the “Patterning” has divided New York City from reality, leading to the invasion by thousands of creatures that want Dylan dead. As in many open-world games, you’re free to roam as Dylan, though the developers brilliantly layer in new powers for Faden that unlock new regions, combat approaches, and different enemies. The game balances wiping out packs of routine enemies, the occasional fight with a Resonant or boss, and alternating story and main missions.
The “Resonant” developers lean into significantly more RPG elements with Dylan than they did with Jesse. Skill trees, magical items, various weapons to choose for a loadout—it’s all deeply customizable. That said, combat works similarly no matter the angle you take. It’s mostly melee-based combat with a steady flow of strike-and-dodge mechanics, but you can also unlock special powers through game progress, including summoning allies to fight alongside you and hurling projectiles.
My first few hours with “Resonant” were mixed. It truly does require you to recalibrate expectations after the relatively linear first game. I found myself wandering New York City, unsure what to do and wondering why the story missions were kicking my ass. The answer is that this game doesn’t just encourage exploration; it requires it. You can’t push through only the story missions in “Resonant” because you won’t be strong enough. You need to complete side missions to level up and become strong enough to take on enemies like Resonants, but you also need to explore the city, wandering into places like laundromats and gyms to find upgrade resources.
After a couple of hours, “Resonant” kicks into gear and doesn’t look back. Several missions in this game rank among the best of the last several years, including one where you escape a sinkhole and one where Dylan plays with shadows of himself and a younger Jesse that are unquestionably moving. This game does things narratively that would terrify most writers’ rooms in games, TV, or film. The missions can be so wildly unpredictable—one minute you’re guiding a magical cat to fight a demon and the next you’re battling mold spore creatures that look like the kin of Bloaters from “The Last of Us.”
You can never quite tell where “Resonant” is going, which gives it the storytelling power of great film or television. It’s got enough authorial decisions through customization and exploration to make you feel like you’re in “Control,” but it also contains remarkably confident writing, not just in plot but dialogue and character work as well.
And then there’s the navigation. After a few clunky hours where even getting around NYC can feel tough, Dylan gains two powers: one that can pull him to points on buildings above him, and one that can basically turn the entire world on its axis. You know that scene in “Inception” wherein Elliot Page’s character flips the city on itself and they “walk up” a street?
Now imagine that in gameplay. While it sounds almost impossibly disorienting, the developers use it in just the right places, allowing Dylan to control not just through superpowered combat but by shifting the entire world around him. It leads to some of the most stunning level design in years, especially late in the game when the entire setting becomes pliable.
What Remedy Entertainment is doing with the “Alan Wake” and “Control” games is unlike anything else on the market. They’re accomplishing what so many great artists have done: Pushing back against the rules and expectations put on their form by so many years of conforming creators. We can argue all day about the definitions of art, but the ambition in “Control Resonant” is a sibling of what we so often look for in literature, film, or theatre, too. It’s that charge we all get when we can tell something is working in a way we haven’t really experienced before. Maybe more than any game this year, “Resonant” has it.
The Publisher provided a review copy of this title. It is now available on PS5, Xbox Series, and Windows.
- Lit from Within: Eva Marie Saint (1924-2026) (October 7, 2026)
There’s a famous scene in “On the Waterfront” (1954) that shows Marlon Brando’s Terry Malloy flirting with Eva Marie Saint’s convent-trained Edie Doyle in his palooka-like way, and what people remember most is his improvisation and her reaction. When Saint drops her glove during the scene, Brando decided to pick it up and toy with it, and Saint uses that to make her nervous character even more nervous; she physicalizes it like the best Method actor, never overdoing it, always keeping it real and controlled. This could and often is shown in classrooms to acting students as the best example of “using” something that happens in a scene to enhance it, yet Saint is so good in this movie, which won her the 1954 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, because she never seems to be acting.
She grew up with Quaker parents in New Jersey, and her early career was spent in live television, where she projected a radiant sweetness opposite Lillian Gish in a production of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful” (1953), a first hint that Saint was more than happy to support a star performance rather than give one herself. In Steve Vineberg’s insightful 1991 book Method Actors, he places her in a chapter titled “Method Sanity,” positing her as an example of an actor trained in the Method but not reliant on the neuroticism and flashy emotional tics of some of the other performers from the Actors Studio.
Elia Kazan auditioned her for “On the Waterfront,” and Saint recalled, “Brando came in and started teasing me. He put me off balance. And I remained off balance for the whole shoot.” Part of the quality of her performance in this famous movie is how she manages to play so many things—shyness, nerves, determination, fear, sexual awakening—in such a clean, straightforward way. Watching Saint as Edie is like watching a bird hatching from an egg, or a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis, trembling, fragile, but full of life. Saint never lets Brando throw her off balance; instead, she uses what he does to strengthen her own interpretation of the character.
“I may have the baby right here!” cried a heavily pregnant Saint as she accepted her Oscar for “On the Waterfront” from Frank Sinatra. Already married to television producer and director Jeffrey Hayden (they were wed from 1951 until his death in 2016, for 65 years), Saint had two children with him and focused on family life, only taking a few parts here and there, like the pregnant wife in “A Hatful of Rain” (1957).
Alfred Hitchcock cast Saint as what she fondly recalled as “a sexy spy lady” in his classic thriller “North by Northwest” (1959), opposite Cary Grant, and he bought her a full wardrobe at Bergdorf Goodman and drawled, “No more kitchen sinks for you, Eva Marie.” When Grant’s Roger Thornhill first encounters Saint’s Eve Kendall on a train, she looks and sounds like the dream of most men, a smart beauty getting down to brass tacks. Roger is on the lam, and she sits serenely in the dining car and watches him steadily, in that focused way that Saint had.
Hitchcock instructed Saint to lower her voice a bit for this role, which works wonders as a contrast to her still-girlish beauty. Censors made her re-dub a line of dialogue: “I never make love on an empty stomach” became “I never discuss love on an empty stomach,” but they couldn’t censor that look on her face as she stares at the ever-desirable Grant. There comes a point when Eve says, in her throaty voice, “It’s going to be a long night…I don’t particularly like the book I started…know what I mean?” Saint times this line perfectly, lingering over it, enjoying it, for this is truly one of the most sheerly enjoyable movies ever made, and she herself was tickled by it. Playing with Grant was just as challenging as playing with Brando, and Saint holds her own with both of these very different male performers.
MGM executives told Hitchcock to cut a long scene where Saint’s Eve explains her life situation to Grant and talks about her former ennui before becoming a double agent, but Hitchcock knew that this was a key scene for Saint and for his movie that deepened it and gave it some depth of emotion, so he stood firm and kept it in, even though the running time of “North by Northwest” was longer than his usual (136 minutes). Remember Saint’s face in the auction scene, when Eve is torn between her duties and her desires as she is fought over by Roger and Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), and remember the way her long, elegant fingers toy with Grant’s ear as they kiss each other on the train, that book which Eve doesn’t particularly like set aside for sex and adventure.
Saint did her best to hold together the very long takes in Otto Preminger’s “Exodus” (1960) but was let down by some of the most obvious post-dubbing of lines of all time. She was very touching as a woman destroyed by desire in “All Fall Down” (1962), ruined by Warren Beatty and maybe taking pleasure in it. But she gave her finest performance of this era in Irvin Kershner’s “Loving” (1970), a film that has been neglected and deserves re-appraisal.
Saint plays Selma, a wife and mother deeply in love with her husband (George Segal), and helpless as he starts to drift away. A memorable scene shows Segal inadvertently revealed on camera with another woman to everyone at a party, and Saint plays this moment in her usual no-frills style: 100% real and very physical. Her pain when she confronts him is hard to forget, and it lingers because Saint was the sort of actor who wasn’t interested in personal glory or showing off. She wanted to capture what a real person might be like in a real situation, and she had the skill, intelligence, and sensitivity to do that.
Saint continued to work in television, and eventually became a popular guest at film festivals, showing her two classic movies, “On the Waterfront” and “North by Northwest.” After her husband died, she made a moving appearance at the Academy Awards in 2018 to present the award for costume design, savoring the memory of the black dress with red flowers she wore as Eve Kendall. She lived to the age of 102, surrounded by family and grandchildren, the classiest elderly lady imaginable, proud and amused to be the female lead in two of the best movies of all time, to which she brought the clarity of morning sunlight.
- Female Filmmakers in Focus: Paloma Schneideman on “Big Girls Don’t Cry” (October 7, 2026)
Growing up queer, especially in a rural community, isn’t easy. This is something “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” the debut from New Zealand writer-director Paloma Schneideman, knows intimately. Set in the summer of 2006, the film follows Sid (Ani Palmer, delivering a knockout debut performance), an angsty teen coming of age in a newly digital world. As she tries on new personality traits like outfits and flits from friend group to friend group, Sid also contends with her newfound sexual desires, without much of a roadmap.
Writing out of the film’s world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it competed as part of its World Dramatic Competition, I found that “what really makes this film special is the way Schneideman subtly indicates how painful it was in that era to grow up queer without any real support system, even if you never experienced any actual violence.”
Hailing from Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, New Zealand, Paloma Schneideman is a multi-talented writer, director, and musician whose work explores the complexities of family, intimacy, and identity. Although she intended to pursue a double degree in law and the arts at Victoria University in Wellington, Schneideman dropped out after a year.
Paloma Schneideman (Photo: Nicola Sandford)
She worked at the Matakana Cinemas and traveled before deciding to follow her heart and transfer into the performing and screen arts program at Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland. Working across the film and music industries for the last decade, Schneideman has performed at music festivals under the moniker PollyHill and directed music videos and short films, including “Mine” (2015), “Memory Foam” (2019), and “Gate Crash” (2023).
Schneideman drew on her rural upbringing and queer coming-of-age for “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” which she partially developed during Oscar-winning filmmaker Jane Campion and producer Philippa Campbell’s filmmaking intensive, A Wave in the Ocean. Schneideman was one of ten participants selected for the first cohort, where she worked with Campion, Campbell, and other industry professionals to hone her directorial voice.
Speaking about the program with RogerEbert.com in 2023, Campion shared that “mostly, you learn through having the opportunity to try to do things” and that it felt “absolutely fabulous to create a program that I think is really wholesome and exciting.”
The intensive work certainly paid off for Schneideman. After its world premiere at Sundance, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” screened at South by Southwest, BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival, TIFF Next Wave, Melbourne International Film Festival, and as the opening night film of the 2026 Whānau Mārama New Zealand International Film Festival.
For this month’s Female Filmmakers in Focus column, RogerEbert.com spoke with Schneideman over Zoom about Jane Campion’s mentorship, why casting is such an important part of directing, the simultaneous singularity and universality of rural life, yearning for the 2000s, and why her subtly queer twist on the coming-of-age genre belongs to everyone.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You developed this film as part of Jane Campion‘s intensive filmmaking course A Wave in the Ocean. Could you talk about that process?
I have nothing but love for Jane and Philippa Campbell, who ran the course. I was part of the first cohort. I remember seeing the application for it on social media. I was already a year or two into drafting this film. I already had a producer. I was also building my portfolio, making shorts and music videos.
When I saw the opportunity to do this film school for a year with the great Jane Campion, where you got to make a short film, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do another school because I had already been to film school and participated in mentorships. Anything that could do to hone my craft, I’m always the first to put my hand up and do it. But my producer convinced me to apply, and I’m so glad I did, because I’m pretty sure the film wouldn’t have had as much depth without this extensive year with Jane and Philippa.
There were ten of us in the program, and we learned so much from each other and with each other. We became friends and found a community, which can often feel quite lonely in this emerging space. The school was very holistic and spiritual in many ways. We learned about cameras and lenses, of course, but we’d also take a week off for a yoga camp. Kim Gillingham would come and teach us about our dreams.
So, I was meant to make a short the following year, in 2024. Jane knew about the feature I was developing. She’d let me use the course to practice my skills. She read the script. She really loved it and gave me feedback. As I got closer to shooting this short film, which I had written a script for, Jane said, “I think you should just do the feature.” She knew that my instincts were much sharper, and I was much more ready to do the feature. I had lived this feature, and I’d been thinking about it for like five years at this point. So she gave me her blessing to do it.
And you know, when someone like Jane Campion tells you you’re ready, then you believe you’re ready. She’s been riding with us the whole time. She visited us on set. Gave feedback on casting. She’s just the best.
Even though this is set in New Zealand, growing up queer in a rural community feels the same in every rural place around the globe. Rural isolation is so real, even though it’s specific to the regions. What was the process like for you to tap back into all of that and turn it into something so beautiful?
I always say I made this film for my 14-year-old self. I do think a big part of making this film was trying to process what it was like to be a teenager from a small-town upbringing, leaving the small town for university, and meeting my community of friends and queers and artists. There was always this little bit of shame in my chest. I really didn’t feel like I could talk about what it was like to grow up and to be so lonely and to be so confused and to have sexual desire.
I honestly couldn’t talk about that until my mid-20s, when I found my community. I also felt a collective awakening when we started chatting about our experiences. Then you start to realize that everyone’s had a version of it. That’s when I realized I needed this film. Yes, for my 14-year-old self, but also for this community.
Because you know it’s all about building language, right? That’s what films give us: more language to understand ourselves. So, while making the film has been unbelievably cathartic for me to process it all, I also feel responsible for my peers and my friends. What’s funny is that the film doesn’t feel like it’s just mine anymore. When someone messages me and says “I felt so seen,” I know it’s not just my film; It’s theirs, too. So, yes, I think it’s been cathartic for me. But I think what’s been more rewarding is what it’s offered to other people.
And you’re right about the rural thing. It’s this unexplainable phenomenon of hoping there’s something more out there, and not being sure if there is. Also, in rural places everyone knows everyone. So there is a real collective, family mentality, but also people still judge you.
It’s both. I feel like if you didn’t grow up in a rural space, you either believe one side of the stereotype or the other. It’s hard to explain that it’s actually both. It’s really warm and loving, and also really horrible, and people can be so snippy.
I think that’s why I love that in our film we have these city folk who come in and infiltrate. It helped unlock this other cultural and socio-political world, shake up this small-town bullshit, and introduce more bullshit. The rural thing is funny, because it does seem to resonate across the globe. Every small town feels like there’s something similar no matter where you are.
Big Girls Don’t Cry (Photo: Jen Raoult)
The best films about rural life always come from people who have lived it and get the little details right. You also set this film in the mid-2000s and fill it with lovely period-specific details like the Van Dutch trucker hats, MSN Messenger, and the way text messages cost an arm and a leg. As you were crafting a period setting, how did you know which details to include without it feeling like pastiche?
Honestly, just like lived experience. This was not a quick script. I spent three years redrafting, not because it was a hard script to write. That’s just the reality of being an artist in New Zealand. You have to work seventy-five other jobs. But as I was writing, it was about trying to figure this story out, both the psychological scarring and the joy that the sounds and the textures of that time bring me. They are so visceral; more than anything, they let me know I could honor that time period.
I remember the excitement of getting my first email address, and all of a sudden, I could take my sister’s laptop and be in chat rooms. I remember the excitement of discovering LimeWire, and every song was suddenly at my disposal.
I remember LimeWire.
You give your computer a million viruses.
Then you have to convince your parents that you don’t know how it happened.
Like, yeah, the computer’s broken, but it was worth it for that one Pretty Ricky song that you burned onto a CD and became the soundtrack of your adolescence.
Exactly.
I think we’re quite obsessed with the nostalgia of that time today because we’re realizing that, before the birth of the internet, it was almost a pure time, I guess, and it’ll never be the same again since social media came along. I thought that people would have a yearning connection to it, yearning for something simpler.
Also, I just loved the idea of a girl who was coming of age just as her whole landscape was changing – technology, social, politics, everything was changing. I thought that backdrop was a nice mirror for what she was going through.
I read an interview you did at Sundance where you said you believed directing is 80% casting. You really knocked it out of the park with Ani Palmer as Sid. Can you talk about what you saw in her and what you hoped she would bring to the character?
I stand by that statement, too. Shoutout to my casting directors – Nikki Barrett, Kate McGill, and Tina Clearly – because they’re so amazing. I knew whoever we cast as Sid would be in every scene in the film. That’s how it’s been from the first draft of the script. The rule I gave myself to stay connected as a director and always have as a compass to fall back on was that Sid is in every scene, and we, the audience, are not allowed to know anything she doesn’t know.
That meant whoever played Sid needed to be compelling and watchable, even when they’re doing nothing. From the moment I saw Ani, that’s what she was. She has such naivety and innocence, but also this deep wisdom. I’d ask her questions and her answers would just baffle me; then she’d be playing Pokémon on her Game Boy. She could hold everything in her at once.
I always knew in my heart that Ani was our Sid, and that there would have been 1000 other Sids that would have been great, but for this version of the story, it was always Ani. But Jane Campion really affirmed it when I sent her some casting tapes. She said, “I could watch Ani fold the washing and be just as compelled by her.” She was someone I wanted to protect and keep safe, and I knew the audience would too. Or, I hoped the audience would feel that way too, even when she does shitty things, which she does sometimes.
It’s admirable to show such a messy teen girl non-judgmentally, because we were all that messy. We were all mean to our best friends sometimes and made bad choices.
We all did things we wish we hadn’t. And I just really wanted to give that grace to this protagonist. The coming-of-age genre is built on tropes, but most of them are similar worldwide for a reason. It’s quite a formulaic genre. I was used to seeing the geeky girl and the shy girl, and I was used to seeing the rebel girl. But I hadn’t seen a version like this: not a class clown, but a tomboyish, bold, really inquisitive, really curious girl who could shrink, but also step up when she needed to be confident and brave. That’s why I knew Ani was so perfect for the role.
Big Girls Don’t Cry (Photo: Jen Raoult)
Then you have Rain Spencer, who was so great in “Good Girl Jane” a few years ago, as the exchange student Freya.
“Good Girl Jane” is such a great film, and she gives a great performance. Similarly, I think she’s in every scene in that film, and her performance has so many layers. So when you are making a film, you do your research. I was watching interviews and doing some snooping, and I thought that she just has a unique presence. She’s very grounded and down to earth, and that’s what I wanted Freya to be.
I didn’t want her to be a sex kitten or a girl next door. I like the idea of this girl who is so comfortable in her skin, and she’s a bit of a slacker and smokes pot, but also she listens to you, and when she gives you her attention, you feel like the only person in the room. I think Rain embodied that. Rain is so warm, even her voice. She’s got that low voice. It feels very earthy, and you feel safe around her. That’s what I felt our Freya character needed.
When we met over Zoom, we instantly felt like friends. She was so generous. She is so generous as an actor, so thoughtful. I don’t think she was the conventional choice for that character, but she did such a beautiful job.
Then you have Noah Taylor, who is Australian acting royalty, as Sid’s dad. How did he become involved with the project?
Noah Taylor was such an aha moment for me. I was told to write all the characters with love, and if I don’t love them, they’re gonna have a really hard time. So when I wrote the father character, I was like, okay, he needs to be funny, because humor does so much for winning people over and bringing levity. In the wrong hands, this film could be very dark, so I knew we needed something charming about him, but he also has complexity and intelligence. He’s not a deadbeat dad. He’s an artist, he’s smart, and he’s just lost his way a little bit, and I think we empathize with why. Any single parent is just doing their best.
So when I thought about Noah for this role, it just felt so obvious that he would bring so much nuance to this character. We had a Zoom, and we were instantly like locked in. He couldn’t come and rehearse as much as the others, so we sent each other letters: him and the character, complaints as the father character, complaints to the local police department, complaints to his neighbors. He was just so willing to play, which is everything I love in an actor. Being open to discovery.
It was great to have him on set as a very seasoned, almost father figure to us all on a crew. A lot of us on the crew and in the cast were quite green, and this was our first feature, so I think we really like came to appreciate the energy he brought on set
I’m really interested in the way you balance all the relationships in this film. Sid has her friend, her sister, Freya, her dad, and the girls she longs to be friends with. It’s a pretty complex first script to have your main character going through all these different relationships. Did you always imagine Sid’s social world being so big?
I always loved the idea of this girl in the middle of this web. I visualized her as a pinball. You remember that Windows 98 pinball game? You could play that or Minesweeper. Anyways, that was my visualizer of her journey at large. I loved this idea, but it also broke my heart. This girl goes anywhere that would have her for a moment, and then she gets batted away.
I think that is what it is to be a teenager, unless you’re really grounded and sure of yourself. You go where there’s a sniff of attention. So I knew we needed all these characters, and we needed to give them each their own life. I think in this kind of multi-character story, it’s really easy to write stereotypes so the audience can take it in and process that: that’s the main girl, that’s the asshole guy, etc. But it felt really important that each character had some context for their behavior.
I would say I loved all of them. Even Lana (Beatrix Rain Wolfe), who can be quite cruel, I empathized with her. And the dad as well, and even Freya, who’s maybe not perfect at the end. I think one of the cool boys probably has fewer redeeming qualities, but I also wanted to create a little understanding that they’re going through it too. Like everyone’s literally coming of age, trying to find out the right version of themselves.
I love the idea that sometimes you can be so lonely in company. Then you look at the difference between loneliness and solitude. I think at home, yes, Sid was lonely, but there was more solitude there. Whereas when she is the loneliest in that group of people, that’s a powerful image. For her, the grass is always greener, which aligns with this kind of summer-set New Year’s film. That time of year, you always have these fantasies. Even with love interests and being cool, things are often better left in fantasy because reality is never what you want it to be, but it’s probably what you need it to be.
Is there anything you hope people might take from this film when they’ve finished it?
Rain texted me when she watched the film for the first time, and she sent this really beautiful reply: “I think you’ve given me the gift of thinking about my younger self with a lot more compassion.” I don’t even mean just for millennials. Sometimes my favorite responses have been from parents who have come to the film. I hope people will be a little braver, give themselves more grace, and feel empowered to be more open. Also, after all these festival runs, I hope people go watch it in a cinema.
I think it’d be great to watch in the privacy of your own home as well, because it’s an intimate film, and sometimes you need that for the subject matter. But what you get when you watch with an audience, and the power of that collective experience, is something else.
My sound designer messaged me the other day. He watched the film up in Matakana, which is where we shot it. He was there with his mum, and he said he was watching it when a father and daughter sat a few feet away, and the father was quietly crying. So, I just hope people will be able to go and feel a little bit held by this thing, a little bit held and, like, hugged by it, even though it’s not an easy watch at all. But I hope it gives some levity and some good post-cinema discussion, because that’s why we love cinema. Go chew the fat afterward and figure out your own answers.
Big Girls Don’t Cry (Photo: Jen Raoult)
Obviously, we talked a bit about Jane Campion, but I wonder if any other women have made films that have inspired you?
So many. The first two that come to mind are Céline Sciamma and Eliza Hittman. I am so inspired by their bravery to talk about things, particularly around female desire, that have felt so taboo for so long. I’d credit those two for making me feel more comfortable with myself. All their films, like “It Felt Like Love,” “Beach Rats,” “Water Lilies,” and “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” are incredible touchstones.
Obviously, yeah, Jane Campion. I watched “The Piano” the other day, and the mastery of tension and longing is incredibly inspiring. There’s also another New Zealand film from 2001 called “Rain.” I think our film has a lot more fun and humor, but in terms of its willingness to go to some quite risky and brave places, Christine Jeffs’ “Rain” is a real inspiration as a New Zealander.
There’s also Catherine Breillat’s “Fat Girl,” and Cheryl Dunye’s “The Watermelon Woman,” and so many others that may not be my experience, but still tell a subtly queer, ambiguous, fluid story. I’m enamored by those kinds of storytellers.
I just saw a restoration of one at TIFF, a Canadian film from 1996 called “Kissed” by Lynne Stopkewich. It’s about a girl who is fascinated with death and grows up to become a necrophiliac. But it’s not gross. It’s not a horror film. It’s deeply empathetic. It’s another film that is about female desire that doesn’t judge. It feels more transgressive than anything I’ve really seen in years, and it’s 30 years old.
I’ll definitely check that out. I think there must be a vault of these films, probably from the 1990s and 2000s, that were short-lived because they were busting open taboo discussions. Even Jane Campion’s “In the Cut” was called way too risqué and out there and got buried.
And now everyone knows it’s a masterpiece.
We need to hold a film festival with all these canceled films and remind everyone that women were prolific and these films are brilliant.
