The first-time solo director behind one of the year’s most startling films offers some perspective on her relationship with her subjects, six teenage boys raised in virtual isolation from the world in a cramped New York apartment.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s husband talks about his feature writing-directing debut, Faults, co-starring Winstead as the captive of a troubled, faltering cult deprogrammer.

The writer-director of the sharp new comedy Appropriate Behavior talks about characterization through sex, incompetence, and cultural mockery.

Australian director Jennifer Kent just made the year’s scariest movie. And she didn’t have to look far for inspiration.

The writer-director talks about why his impeccably crafted debut film isn’t for race-segregated audiences, and why the marketing is more about provocation than actually communicating what his movie is like.

The writer-director discusses aggressive jazz, hate speech, bully teachers, and the lingering question of whether good art is fun, or work.

The first-time feature director talks about how he built a mind-bending yet solid narrative structure that would accommodate his cast’s fully improvised performances.

The first-time director/co-writer and star of the tender, filthy new film talk about expanding their 2009 short into a full-fledged romantic comedy while maintaining its specific, personal point of view.

The granddaughter of Francis Ford and niece of Sofia, Gia Coppola discusses her approach to making a story about teenagers, and how a lifetime of hanging out on film sets helped her feature debut.

Putting a profitable career in commercials and corporate videos on hold, Jeremy Saulnier staked his career, and his family’s money, on his second feature, the dark thriller Blue Ruin. Remarkably, the gamble has paid off.

Fast becoming a fixture of independent films, Anna Margaret Hollyman talks about White Reindeer, how she overcame her embarrassment about acting, and what it’s like to snort prop cocaine.

For his second film, about the employees and residents of a home for at-risk teens, the filmmaker drew on his documentarian experience and his time working in a similar facility.

The writer-director made the transition away from the editing bay and into the director’s chair for his second feature concerning outlaws—a fixation he attributes to his “fear of being responsible.”

Her sex comedy, set in the 1990s and centering on a college-bound virgin’s methodical attempt at sexual awakening, comes out of an Upright Citizens Brigade background, which made her more focused on being funny than being female.

After writing his first two features himself, director James Ponsoldt decided to direct someone else’s screenplay for a change—and ended up telling an intensely personal story all the same.

The writer-director of this year’s breakout Sundance film talks about what compelled him to explore the 2009 shooting death of Bay Area resident Oscar Grant. In a word: “Proximity.”