- 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.
- Mike Flanagan Finds New Power in Story of “Carrie” (October 6, 2026)
Three or four episodes into Mike Flanagan’s visceral, searing, and provocative eight-part adaptation of “Carrie,” something occurred to me: I had forgotten to be scared.
Maybe it’s because we’ve seen so many adaptations and updates of Stephen King’s classic 1974 novel, from Brian De Palma’s masterful and terrifying 1976 film to the stage work “Carrie: The Musical” to largely forgotten efforts such as “The Rage: Carrie 2” (1999) and made-for-TV “Carrie” (2002), not to mention Kimberly Peirce’s well-constructed remake in 2013 starring Julianne Moore and Chloë Grace Moretz.
We know what goes down: Carrie’s awakening to her powers, the trauma she endures, the prom, the bucket of blood, etc. Even though Flanagan has successfully interpreted King works such as “Doctor Sleep” and “Gerald’s Game,” even King’s initial reaction to yet another telling of the telekinetic tale was to say, “Let the poor girl rest.” (He wasn’t fully supportive, though he’s since changed his tune.)
So yes, there’s the familiarity with the material. But creator/writer/executive producer Flanagan wisely leans into that element, mirroring the novel’s epistolary framework by starting with a series of 911 calls on the night of the prom as the school is consumed by fire, and then pivoting to a documentary, with survivors trying to piece together the horrifying events of that night.
Prime Video’s take on “Carrie” won’t shock us out of our seats because we, too, know what happened. Sure, the series has its share of effective scare moments, but it’s more impressive as a treatise on religious fanaticism, the pack mentality, repression, social isolation, and how high school cruelty has been exacerbated by the ubiquity and frightening power of anonymous keyboard bullies on social media. It’s not the scariest iteration of “Carrie,” but it’s the most layered.
Far too often, films from decades ago are updated into overlong series that dilute the material. “Fatal Attraction,” “American Gigolo,” “Presumed Innocent.” The latest version of “Carrie” breaks that curse. While the core story is still there, the eight-episode arc allows for deeper explorations into the backstories of more than a half-dozen supporting players, and a larger examination of the long history of women who seemingly had extraordinary gifts, e.g., Joan of Arc, and how those powers created “fear, betrayal [and] oblivion.”
The series has the sheen of a “Twilight” movie, with pitch-perfect, ethereal and suitably haunting needle drops such as “Weightless” by Katie Garfield, “In the Bleak Midwinter” by Wolf Alice and “All of Human Knowledge Made Us Dumb” by Sofia Isella. (Nearly all the songs on the soundtrack feature female lead singers and often accompany Carrie’s point of view.)
The series kicks off with an aftermath scene in which a bruised and shaken Sue Snell (Siena Agudong) tells a documentarian, “There’s one thing no one understands about what happened here in Chamberlain…200 deaths, the destruction of an entire town, it’s so easy to forget we were kids. We were kids. We were kids, just trying to do our best.”
And we know how that worked out.
Flashback to conspiracy-minded prepper Ralph White (Tahmoh Penikett) getting killed in a construction accident, which leads authorities to discover the family almost nobody knew existed: Ralph’s wife Margaret (Samantha Sloyan) and their teen daughter Carrie (Summer H. Howell), who knows nothing of the outside world. In order for Margaret to retain custody of Carrie, she must take a job at a local supermarket, and Carrie has to attend Ewing High School, where she quickly becomes the object of ridicule because she doesn’t have a phone—and then suffers a horrific episode in the girls’ locker room that is filmed by her laughing classmates and posted all over the Internet.
Well, now you’ve started it, Ewing High, Class of, well, many of you aren’t going to make it to graduation.
The “Carrie” cast is loaded with Flanagan regulars, and some welcome newcomers as well. Alison Thornton is a hiss-worthy villain as Chris Hargensen, the alpha Mean Girl who leads the bullying of Carrie. (A subplot about Chris’ crumbling home life lends depth to her story, but she’s so awful that the empathy quickly dwindles.)
Amber Midthunder is terrific as Rita Desjardin, the well-meaning but overwhelmed gym teacher who tries to protect Carrie, while Matthew Lillard is the ineffectual Principal Grayle. Tim Bagley plays arguably the series’ most sympathetic character, Peter Morton’s guidance counselor, who connects with Carrie over their shared love of literature. (The show is not without its dark laughs, as when Morton quotes Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” and Carrie says, “Oh. I don’t do scary.”)
An anonymous Instagram account called “CarrieRed_” is the catalyst for chaos within the hallways of Ewing High, with vicious rumors about students and teachers abounding. For the sake of the plot, the film ignores some real-world realities of social media, as we watch adults behave at least as badly as their children.
“Carrie” hums along on the strengths of the stylish visuals, the black humor, and the universally excellent performances. Summer H. Howell personifies Carrie’s callow nature but is up to the task when the blood hits the fan. Samantha Sloyan’s Margaret White is still an oppressive monster, but it’s a fun twist to see Margaret manipulate the community and become something of an influencer.
This is the “Carrie” reboot we didn’t know we needed, and it leaves us wanting more.
All eight episodes of “Carrie” were screened for review.
- Short Films in Focus: Busy Bodies (with Kate Renshaw-Lewis) (October 6, 2026)
Kate Renshaw-Lewis’ “Busy Bodies” is the kind of film I love to program for a shorts block, but it’s not the easiest to write about. Six minutes long, abstract, and open to interpretation, the film is a compelling, weird delight that I have watched many times and still find something odd and new each time. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a spot for it at this year’s festival. That happens, too.)
Using hand-drawn animation combined with “inkjet and screen printing techniques,” “Busy Bodies” is a wordless exploration of machines. At first, we think we might be watching a film about our bodies, specifically, our valves, tubes, and veins we have inside us, doing all this unseen busy work. The film can still be about that, with each new mechanism relying on another to exist. The synopsis suggests it’s about producing rubber gloves.
Could it be both? Or more? Of course. Shorts like this are more about the mood, the texture, the movement and the artist’s sole vision. Renshaw-Lewis’ film remains a compelling watch and feels like a series of paintings that, when looked at together, make a single statement that is completely up to the viewer. There is also something inherently satisfying about what is seen here. Machines are just machines making everything happen, but always at the mercy of bigger hands. The constant flow of work has a kind of soothing, hypnotic quality we can associate with a film like “Koyaanisqatsi.”
Perhaps “Busy Bodies” is about life in balance: every part of a machine working harmoniously together to create and deliver in a timely manner. Like, say, your latest Amazon purchase. Maybe our minds and bodies are so entwined with ordering stuff from Amazon and the like that we forget about what an unforgiving, ominous, indifferent machine goes into making that happen, but we’re all part of it. Maybe this movie is bleaker than I thought. Whatever the case, I enjoy its style, its inventive worldview and, of course, its efficiency.
Q&A with director Kate Renshaw-Lewis
How did this come about?
The film started with an opportunity to pitch a project to Ackzilla Entertainment. At the time, I was working with a local print shop in LA and experimenting with printed animation. The choice of medium, which is a combination of inkjet and silkscreen printing, came first, and I wanted to tell a story that was deeply connected to the very mechanical step-by-step process of printed animation.
My mind immediately went to the hidden mechanisms and production processes behind everyday, mundane items. Things that tend to go by without recognition of how they got there, for example, the abundantly packed and daily stocked aisles of the grocery store. The idea for the film came to me while I was grabbing lunch during my lunch break, and I noticed a small sticker on my pre-packaged tuna wrap that said, “made by hand.” I started wondering: Whose hand? How did they make it? Will I ever know what goes on behind the fluorescently illuminated presentation of the grocery store?
“Busy Bodies” Director Kate Renshaw-Lewis.
You went with hand-drawn animation, inkjet, and screen printing techniques. Can you tell me what went into that decision? Has that always been your preferred style?
Hand-drawn animation is my style of choice; it feels very natural to me and is one of my favorite activities. Printed animation was new to me, and I got into it through experimentation and free access to a print studio. I had experience screen printing still images and items like T-shirts, and I had seen some really lovely printed animations using risograph printing. My first test of printed animation was a quick rotoscope loop of my pet rabbit, Friday, jumping around, which I printed on a risograph printer.
My next test was a short for the screening group I co-run, LA Loft Movie Club, that used screen printing. I loved the specific texture screen printing added, and how much the paper texture was emphasized when I printed very small frames. Initially, Busy Bodies was intended to be fully screen printed, but due to budget and time constraints, I ended up printing the first part of the film on an inkjet printer and the second part with screen printing. This decision added important weight to the narrative. The ending of the film, the deterioration, was also an unexpected result of screen printing.
I’m sure you’ve seen lots of responses and interesting takes for the film. Can you share an overall reaction or one that stands out?
I really love it when someone shares that they also think about the process behind mundane objects. A friend shared that when they take a shower, they spend the entire time thinking about how the water reaches their specific faucet. An interesting response that I wasn’t expecting was the comparison to Dr. Seuss.
I have also heard a few times, and really enjoy hearing, that the film feels like it’s from a different era. One of the first ever screenings of Busy Bodies was at the Philosophical Research Society as part of a vintage animation festival. I was so happy to hear that although Busy Bodies was the only modern film, it felt in place. I’m a big fan of 60s and 70s experimental hand-drawn animation, and I think there’s a softness and whimsy that feels so deeply intertwined with that world of film.
I’m very curious as to why the film thanks the Museum of Jurassic Technology.
I work at the Museum of Jurassic Technology part-time, as well as freelance animation work. The Museum is a truly wonderful place and a deep inspiration. I actually storyboarded the film during downtime while working front-of-house shifts at the museum.
I also would bring the film in at various stages of production to get feedback and thoughts from my friends and coworkers. The Museum has a small theater, which is where I first ever screened the final version of Busy Bodies. If you’re ever in LA, I really recommend visiting it.
And the music (being such a big part of this) was recorded at the Vintage Synthesizer Museum? It’s incredible to me that it exists.
Yes, it’s so incredible! I had heard of the museum, but going to record for Busy Bodies was my first time there. It is such an amazing collection and library of very well-maintained vintage synthesizers. I went with two friends and wonderful musicians, Arius Ziaee and Alex Edgeworth, and we spent 2 straight hours recording a whole library of synthesizer sounds. It got a bit intense because we got so hypnotized that we didn’t take any breaks, and we came out in a complete daze of beeps and boops.
What’s next for you?
I’m currently working on another film with Ackzilla Entertainment. It is a much more ambitious film, so we’re working on a pitch deck right now. It’s a return to hand-drawn and painted multiplane animation. The story is pretty loose, but it’s about someone desperately trying to sleep and the stories my grandparents told me about the overwhelming experience of growing up in small houses with 12 siblings.
- “Star Wars: Galactic Racer” May Not Be Podracing (Mostly), But It’s Pretty Close (October 6, 2026)
One of the joys of the Star Wars universe is that, really, you can imagine yourself being whatever you want to be. The vast galaxy of “Star Wars” games bears that out, especially recently: wannabe Jedi can imagine themselves in the boots of Cal Kestis or Kyle Katarn, blaster-wielding scoundrels have “Star Wars Outlaws” (after some much-needed patches), and amateur space pilots can try their hand at “Star Wars Squadrons.” But for those of us who still wax nostalgic for the “Ben-Hur”-like joys of the podrace from “The Phantom Menace,” Fuse Games has a new-generation game to scratch the itch that “Episode I – Racer” left decades prior: “Star Wars: Galactic Racer.”
“Galactic Racer” is a racing game first and a Star Wars game second, and that’s to its benefit. Sure, the window dressing screams a galaxy far, far away, with familiar-looking planets, a suitably rousing John Williams-ian score by Gordy Haas, and speeders and bikes that have that “used future” feel so central to George Lucas’ vision. But this is also from the minds behind Fuse Games, made of former developers at Criterion Games, who brought us “Burnout” and “Need for Speed”; the emphasis here is on gameplay, fast and furious and the right kind of frustrating.
The loose framework that undergirds the world, and its roguelite single-player campaign, is thus: You play Shade, a mysterious helmeted newbie to the freshly reformed Galactic League, a racing league founded by the gregarious Darius Pax. Pax wants to bring racing back to its pre-Empire glory days, which means hosting a dozen or so expert racers on dangerous, thrilling tracks around the Outer Rim. But Shade is here for more than racing glory—they’ve got a bone to pick with the League’s star player, Kestar Bool, whose past intersects with Shade in ways the campaign will reveal, and hopes to defeat him on the racetrack.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer (Fuse Games)
It’s a simple, straightforward narrative that offers just enough Star Wars flavor to feel like part of the universe, without requiring reams of homework to understand every little thing that’s going on. Sure, some familiar faces show up, including a run-in with an “Episode I” podracer who becomes an erstwhile ally in your quest to defeat Kestar. Some planets will make your nerd senses tingle, too, like “The Force Awakens” starship-graveyard Jakku or the salt-encrusted Crait from “The Last Jedi.” But even the new planets, and your fellow allies and competitors, make surprising impressions, as you form rivalries (and even alliances) with the various racers you’re pitted against.
But enough of the worldbuilding: How does it play? Well, prepare for a steep learning curve, especially if you’re less practiced in racing games: “Galactic Racer” follows the “Burnout” model, throwing you on treacherous tracks with traps, takedowns, and turns that will turn your speeder into scrap if you time them wrong. And crash you will, and often; “Galactic Racer” is a roguelite, whose short gameplay runs are balanced by high difficulty and even higher replayability. Crashing is the name of the game, especially in your first few runs, as you learn the controls, your speeder’s maneuverability, and memorize every hairpin curve the multiple tracks each planet has to offer.
Each time you restart your tour, you can upgrade the base stats on your craft (split between well-balanced landspeeders, speed-heavy speeder bikes that are brutal on turns, and finicky “skim speeders” that feel like the ultimate upgrade… if you can master them), cash in new “favors” that give you certain stat boosts, and pick a racing style that emphasizes everything from longer afterburners to brutal takedowns of your opponents. There are adventure game elements to spice up the campaign in between each sphincter-clenching race, as you figure out what powerups or abilities or aspects of the game you lean toward most, and double down on them. (Fret not, the infamous podracer makes its presence known as well, though mostly in its own separate game mode that doesn’t interact with the other speeders.)
But it’s the nanosecond-to-nanosecond thrills of the racing itself that “Galactic Racer” excels in. Once you get past that initial hump of frustration, and you win (or at least place) in your first race, the game becomes absolutely addictive. In addition to learning how each craft handles, you learn to manage the two different boosts the game gives you: a standard afterburner and a riskier “ramjet” that gives you nearly uncontrollable speed (and the risk of blowing up if you hold it down too much).
Star Wars: Galactic Racer (Fuse Games)
Those, combined with abilities ranging from speed boosts to autopilots to weapons you can use to disable your opponents, create a lot to manage when you’re simply trying to squint through each detailed map you whiz through. Is that junk Star Destroyer engine a shortcut, or something I’ll just smack into and lose crucial progress? That’s the calculus “Galactic Racer” forces you to make, and it’s as exciting as it is expletive-inducing.
The roguelite nature of each run gives you randomized parts to add to your speeder that assist with afterburners, make takedowns tastier, or turn status conditions like burning or cooling into advantages rather than drawbacks. If you bonk into walls too many times, you might damage these parts, which impairs you in other ways, and you have to wait till the next time you saunter past your rare parts dealer to get it fixed.
Outside the single-player campaign, “Galactic Racer” offers some arcade options, plus an online multiplayer element that feels relatively diverting, albeit missing some essential features that might cut down on replayability. (Currently, there’s no way to assemble a large group of friends and play a track together, or—most sinful—an option for split-screen multiplayer.) Granted, the roguelite mode is more than enough fun to be worth the price, but I couldn’t help feeling that “Episode I – Racer” fans will be kicking their heels in frustration at that omission.
Some small caveats aside, “Star Wars: Galactic Racer” is a shockingly addictive addition to the Star Wars games catalog, another winner in a year that already gave us the solid X-COM riff “Zero Company.” Some of the best stories in this universe live on the margins of the Skywalker saga, where the “war” in “Star Wars” thrums in the distant background. There’s no Empire here, no one brandishes a blaster; no one even really dies (at least, in the dozen or so hours I’ve spent on the campaign trail). It’s just “Days of Thunder” in Space, complete with smart-aleck mechanics, shady race sponsors, and a sneer-worthy ’80s bully of a villain you can’t wait to show up on the racetrack. Just look out for those acid lakes; they can get you if you’re not careful.
- 2026 Busan Preview: 10 Films We Can’t Wait to See (October 5, 2026)
The Busan International Film Festival is upon us. The South Korean cinematic celebration, which was founded in 1995, arrives with a new wrinkle this year. A few months ago, the Academy Awards announced that winners from a select few festival competitions would be automatically qualified to compete for Best International Film, even if they were not selected by their respective country. Sundance’s World Cinema and TIFF’s Platform section, Cannes, Venice, and Busan’s main competition were picked as the programs whose winner could be fast-tracked to competing for the Academy Award.
For Busan, the decision is a major step forward. Not that the festival needs validation from a Western awards body, but this is only the second year that Busan’s main competition has existed (Zhang Lü’s “Gloaming in Luomu” won last year). The section’s emergence demonstrates the sturdiness of the festival’s overall programming, one that’s become a tastemaker of Asian cinema and also a destination for some of the fall season’s biggest movies.
This year there are 13 films in competition hailing from Japan, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Iran, and South Korea. In Busan’s Vision-Asia and Vision-Korea sections, which uplifts mostly newer voices, are 24 films. During the festival you can expect several dispatches from myself, which will highlight many of the festival’s talented filmmakers who may be discoveries for you. It’s my first time attending the festival and I’m deeply honored to be doing it on behalf of RogerEbert.com.
In the meantime, below are 10 titles that will probably pop up in our coverage. The first five are from the main competitions. The second half are from the bifurcated Vision program. Come back beginning Friday for our coverage.
(Synopses courtesy of Busan.)
“The First Taste of Loneliness”
The film opens with the death of a father, then moves across the Qiantang River to an old apartment where three generations of women live together. The second scene, filmed in a long take lasting over twenty minutes, meticulously observes the inside of the home the father has left behind, discovering the traces of his presence. The camera quietly captures the lives of the three women as they grieve the loss of the husband, father, and grandfather in their own ways. Their names – Luna, Jiang Yue, and Moon – all evoke the moon, echoing what Yue’s father often said when he was alive: “A moon for every river.” The story of these three women, each carrying a moon in her own river, follows their paths of loneliness and healing. Gu You completes his Landscape trilogy with this film, after Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountain and Dwelling by the West Lake. He layers the characters’ lives across the scenery of rivers, mountains, and cities through fluid and graceful camerawork by cinematographer Mikiya Takimoto, known for his collaborations with Koreeda Hirokazu. Within these landscapes, the delicate and elegant performance of acclaimed Chinese actor Zhou Xun creates an even deeper resonance.
“Hilol”
Hilol quietly counts. She counts while hanging upside down from a window frame, when fear wells up inside, and after realizing for the first time what she wants and does not want. Counting is a way for her to keep her pent-up emotions and desire from erupting, but paradoxically it also allows her to recognize that they are still alive within her. At twenty-three, Hilol has been raised by her father like a son. Her mother died when she was born, and though she was once a Taekwondo champion, she now has little to do other than caring for her father at home. Her older sisters, each struggling with problems of their own, try to arrange marriage for Hilol. Then, she runs into her childhood friend Doniyor by chance, which stirs feelings she does not quite understand. The rough, bold camera follows Hilol as she keeps setting off toward somewhere, only to pull back and capture her standing still as though lost, in an extreme long shot. The interplay between these contrasting shots creates the film’s distinct rhythm. In Uzbekistan, ‘Hilol’ is both a masculine name and a diminutive of the feminine name Hilola, and it also means ‘crescent moon.’ This makes the name a key to understand the film, as well as a metaphor that invites audiences to imagine Hilol’s life after the film ends. Hilol marks the arrival of a notable new voice in Uzbek cinema.
“Ibuku”Sumiati (Christine Hakim) was once a popular Jatilan dancer in her youth, but now she lives alone as a widow. After her husband was ruined by gambling and took his own life, leaving her with nothing but his debts, Sumiati is forced to marry off her only daughter Sri (Ayushita) to help pay them off. But she cannot protect Sri from an abusive, alcoholic son-in-law, and Sri flees the country to become a migrant worker abroad. There, subjected to abuse by her employer, she commits murder and is sentenced to death. When news of her daughter’s tragic fate reaches her, Sumiati makes the desperate decision to go and see her in person, defying the indifference and objections of those around her. Eddie Cahyono’s fourth feature, IBUKU, once again turns to the family narratives of his native Yogyakarta. As in his earlier work, he explores in even greater depth the lives of women living under oppression. The suffering of women forced to endure sacrifice and resistance amid patriarchal and economic collapse unfolds here into a profound psychological journey. The land, parched by relentless drought, becomes both a mirror for the characters’ devastated inner lives and trauma, and a paradoxical refuge from them. For women neglected by society and community alike, trapped with no way out in the snares of their own lives, might what they truly need now be reconciliation and forgiveness? Is this the only way to break this chain of tragedy?
“Midday Meal”
In a parched badland village that looks like the end of the world, Solan is the only teacher. After years of enduring the poorly paid temporary job, he holds one modest dream – to become a full-time teacher and to live in a proper house with his mother. But everything begins to unravel with the death of the benefactor who had funded the school’s meal program. If the meals stop, most of the students will stop coming, and the school’s closure becomes inevitable. The education office offers no real help, only an order to keep the classes running. Desperate, Solan withdraws his rental deposit, moves into the school, and begins a precarious double life as a teacher by day, and oil smuggler by night. And through it all, his mother stays by his side, quietly trusting him. In Midday Meal, Iranian master Majid Majidi shows this world with unflinching rawness, and his direction reveals a gift for capturing layered emotions that resist easy words. His camera runs close to the characters’ emotions, then falls still at key moments, heightening the drama through that very stillness. Do Solan’s ends justify the means? Are choices driven by pure goodwill, or are they nothing more than self-interest masquerading as virtue? Within its own running time, the film can only project a single facet of reality, but how far today’s conscience might take root for generations to come is left to the audience.
“Silver Express”
Following her acclaimed short Ginger Boy, director Tanaka Miki returns with silver express, a quiet and deeply empathetic exploration of modern intimacy. The story follows Chieri (Okamoto Yui), a young woman who has never experienced romantic or sexual attraction. Feeling perpetually out of place in a world obsessed with romance, her isolation finally lifts when she meets Shoya (Kurihara Hayato). Also lacking romantic feelings, Shoya offers Chieri a rare sense of understanding. However, their sanctuary begins to unravel over a fundamental difference: while Chieri is asexual, Shoya is aromantic and experiences physical longing that Chieri cannot reciprocate. Tanaka shines behind the camera, cementing her reputation as a director with a rare visual sincerity. Elevating her strong cast, she captures Chieri’s internal landscape with remarkable delicacy, translating complex emotional states—isolation, relief, and quiet friction—into atmospheric visual poetry. What lingers most is Tanaka’s distinctive directorial ‘touch’—a subtle, sensitive approach to filmmaking that prioritizes mood, character texture, and raw emotional resonance. Driven by Okamoto’s compelling debut and Kurihara’s grounded charisma, silver express is a contemplative character study that offers a uniquely nuanced lens into asexual and aromantic experiences, marking another stylish showcase of Tanaka’s undeniable artistic vision.
“1982”
Vietnamese cinema is riding high. Its films are earning recognition abroad and the box office keeps setting new records. But what does any of that mean to Yen, who hasn’t made a single film in ten years? A mother with dementia, a son treated like a problem child, a sister buried in debt and a brother unable to marry only deepen her financial troubles. Can she keep making films? About ten years after her sensational debut Flapping in the Middle of Nowhere, director Nguyễn Hoang điệp returns with her new film 1982. This metacinematic film lays bare her unfiltered love for cinema itself. In the film, what Yen searches for is not just her missing mother but her own self, worn down after ten years of struggle. The point where life and film slide into each other will linger with audiences who have each sought their own balance in life.
“Beyond Love’s Horizon”
Taeyoung (Park Songyeol) and Jumi (Won Hyangra), a married couple who have closed down their shop, are at a loss. Then, like a miracle, new life arrives. The road through pregnancy, childbirth, childrearing, and caregiving proves far more grueling and arduous than expected. Overwhelmed by extreme physical and mental exhaustion, the couple fumbles, falters, stumbles, and slips again and again. And yet, their child is pure, absolute joy. For Park Songyeol and Won Hyangra, whose lives have always been the wellspring of their creative work, dating and marriage have now led to the momentous event of welcoming a new member into their family. Compared with their previous works, the narrative and form are more relaxed and straightforward, but the variety of visual styles previously unseen in their films, along with the interplay of black-and-white and color, seems to attest to the unfamiliar experiences and sensations brought on by the birth of their child. The film declares with its entire being that childrearing, which demands tremendous energy, is the most urgent question and overwhelming reality in their cinema. However overwhelming, awkward, and difficult it may be, there is no compromise. It is a declaration of self that is built and carried forward through film, a vigorous serenade of love, and a spirited chorus proclaiming, ‘We will keep going.’
“The Birds”
Yeok (Kang Kyunghun), a middle-aged teacher raising a son and a daughter alone, witnesses students fall to their deaths from the rooftop of the school where she works. Discovering that her daughter Hyejeong (Sim Su-bin) was also present at the scene, she presses her for answers, but Hyejeong only repeats the same words: ‘There was a bird in the sky.’ As the strange, unexplained deaths continue, Yeok, together with a reporter covering the case and a streamer who runs a birding channel, head towards the birds’ habitat. In the SF fantasy drama The Birds, falling humans seem helplessly drawn by some overwhelming, inexplicable force, as if intoxicated and entranced by a mysterious substance, plunging of their own accord and drifting listlessly. This astonishing phenomenon is not merely temporary, but a reflection of the merciless and brutal logic of this world – and, at the same time, a fierce assault on it. Strange and sorrowful is a world in which adults and children alike are steeped in melancholy, unable to endure or even be themselves without recourse to fantasy and hallucination.
“Full Moon”
Middle schooler Hyemi (Jung Minju) longs to shine as the center of her school dance team. But when a costume mishap occurs on stage during the Jeongwol Daeboreum (Great Full Moon) festival, cracks begin to spread through Hyemi’s once self-assured world. She grows distant from her close friends, and worse still, the existence of her parents – a secret she has kept to herself, hoping the world would never find out – is now in danger of being exposed to everyone. FULL MOON captures the moment when two opposing impulses within an adolescent girl collide – the desire to turn away from and conceal her most vulnerable self, and the longing to be seen and recognized by the world – opening the first crack in her life. The taste of loss is bitter, and the confusion cruel, but this is not the end. Just as the moon wanes only to wax again, she discovers an unexpected friendship and forms a tender connection with the adult world she once thought she could never understand. Clean, unembellished cinematography and music that feels like an intimate language richly fill out the film.
“There Will Be Snow”The film begins with a striking scene: a world covered in snow and ice, where people are busy cutting and transporting massive blocks of ice, while skyscrapers loom in a haze far behind them. Across the screen comes the depressing news that the construction connecting the ice city Glaceterre to the intelligent city system Fireworks has once again been delayed. When Gu Chen receives a phone call from a dance troupe in the highly automated city of Bright Zone, she is excited by the prospect of finally leaving Glaceterre. Meanwhile, Xu Chu, an engineer who took part in the development of Fireworks, returns to his hometown in search of lost memories. Bathed in bluish light, the film creates a fantastical atmosphere through images of snow, ice, reindeer, and iron bridges, breathing warmth into the ruined city of Glaceterre. Gu Chen’s last dance seems to suggest that as long as memories and love remain, what keeps us going may be the imperfect rhythm of life itself.
