In a year full of bold cinematic achievements, many of the stories attracting awards attention are driven by their filmmakers’ consuming passion not just to direct but write them as well. Their identification of projects demanding to be brought to life in a very specific aesthetic key — from page to screen — imbues the resulting work with unique personality and hopefully deeper emotional connections from audiences.
Among a wide spectrum of visions drawn from deep personal investment, Mohammad Rasoulof’s drama “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” revolves around a family man and judge in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court contending with personal and societal unrest during a period of nationwide political protests. To amplify the story’s intensity, Rasoulof blended images of real Iranian protests into his fictional narrative, prompting anger from Iranian authorities who sentenced him to an eight-year prison sentence, forcing the filmmaker into exile.
Rasoulof says that storytellers shouldn’t underestimate the ways that the real world informs the creative process, especially during times of great conflict. “Limitations and censorship touch you to the bones, and oftentimes you create something bigger and better and greater than the illusion of fear, which is even more powerful than fear itself,” says Rasoulof. “The engine behind the artistic process is the questions that the artist holds for themselves, and finding the answers to those questions is the need — which determines your strategic mindset.”
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Spotlighting the post-WWII immigration experience for Holocaust survivors who came to America in search of a new beginning, Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” superficially feels like Oscar boilerplate, telling its epic story in intimate terms. Co-written by Corbet and his wife and writing partner, Mona Fastvold, “The Brutalist” chronicles the journey of fictional Hungarian architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody). “The creative process requires time to conceive and execute screenplays between the realization of each project, which slows overall productivity and potential for output, but which allows for personal growth and, hopefully, from keeping us from repeating ourselves,” Corbet says.
Learning to trust his instincts is part of the process to which Corbet has grown accustomed, though he recognizes that pushing himself out of his comfort zone always leads to unexpected challenges. From its decades-spanning screenplay to the logistics of shooting on 70mm film stock — on a reported $10 million budget — every aspect of “The Brutalist” teems with ambition. “The writing process, which consists of extensive research and learning, is what allows us to know a project and its themes inside and out. And then, after raising money for the project, which is always the most difficult part of any filmmaker’s process, we’re able to work with relative ease and freedom once we begin rolling cameras, years after the initial inception.”
Another hard-charging, in-your-face odyssey focused on a sex worker a la his 2021 film “Red Rocket,” Sean Baker’s “Anora” follows a young stripper (Mikey Madison) who impulsively marries the rich and flamboyant son (Mark Eydelshteyn) of a Russian oligarch. Each of Baker’s films have brought him more mainstream attention, but his defiant independence has helped him cultivate a cinematic voice that’s not only authentic but unflinchingly honest. “‘Anora’ doesn’t check the usual boxes, and I don’t automatically think of casting my films with A-list box office talent,” Baker says. “Don’t get me wrong — I love A-list actors, and maybe someday I’ll work with them. But I look for whoever is right for the role.
“What really bothers me is when I talk to other people in the industry, and we’re discussing a new project, and the first question always is, ‘Who is in it?’” he adds. “Not, ‘What’s the film about?’”
“Emilia Pérez,” which French filmmaker Jacques Audiard adapts from his own opera (itself loosely based on Boris Razon’s 2018 novel “Écoute”), turns the conventional expectations of a movie musical upside-down. The story focuses on a Mexican lawyer enlisted to help a notorious cartel boss retire, so that they can then transition into living as a woman. Listening to his gut was critical as Audiard undertook the genre-busting project. “What inspires me is telling stories that speak to me and to my time,” he says. “I trust myself and my instincts. I’m curious about people and the world around us, and my deepest conviction is that I’ve always seen cinema as a tool for reconciliation.”
In “September 5,” co-writer and director Tim Fehlbaum examines the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis from the perspective of the ABC Sports news crew, who became unlikely participants in a global incident as one of the few international news organizations on site to provide real-time reporting. Working with co-writers Moritz Binder and Alex David, Fehlbaum felt as much responsibility to tell the news crew’s story as accurately and sensitively as the news crew did the harrowing events they were covering. “We did a ton of research in order to get all of the details correct, and we really wanted to explore what the role of the media was on that day,” he says. “I’ve never directed a script that I haven’t written, and the first thing that became clear to us was that the story was still incredibly important.”
Though he doesn’t receive an on-screen writing credit on “Conclave,” director Edward Berger was involved very early in the creative process with screenwriter Peter Straughan as he adapted Robert Harris’ novel of the same name. The film follows a cardinal (Ralph Fiennes) who’s tasked with organizing a conclave to elect the next pope while investigating secrets and scandals about each candidate. “I like to get involved as early as possible so you can really own the project, and you can only feel like you’re personally invested if you’re there from the beginning,” Berger says. “Peter is a much better writer than I am, and I’d read some of his other works and he stood out to me as one of the best writers in the world. He always tells a complex and compelling story. But his work has a soul and a real second layer, and you care about the people in the story.”
Also based on previous material, “The Piano Lesson,” the debut of filmmaker Malcolm Washington, was co-adapted with screenwriter Virgil Wilson from August Wilson’s original Depression-era play about the eponymous family heirloom, which is decorated with designs carved by an enslaved ancestor, and its impact on the members of the Charles family. Washington says that Wilson’s original text elicited strong emotions that he tried to replicate as he translated it to the screen. “Working from a place of intuition is the highest level of creativity that I strive for,” he says. “I approach most of my work from a conceptual standpoint, with consideration of a historical and cultural context, so it’s important for me to push myself past intellectual ideas and into a more intuitive space.
“It can be scary at times, but ultimately, it’s what infuses the screenplay and the film with a soul,” Washington says.