Seventh Row

A place to think deeply about movies

Podcasts on films that screened at Sundance

Here you'll find all of our podcast episodes which cover films that played at the Sundance Film Festival in past years, from Sundance hits like Leave No Trace to under-the-radar films like The Assistant and Oslo, August 31st.

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Ep. 107: Another Round and Oslo, August 31st: Are men OK? Masculinity, mental health, & addiction Redux

This week, we’re celebrating the 10th anniversary of Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31, our favourite film of the 2010s, on both the site and the podcast. As part of the celebration, we are presenting a special edition of our December 2020 podcast episode, “Are men OK? Masculinity, mental health, & addiction in Another Round and Oslo, August 31st.”

This episode is a Seventh Row members exclusive, as are all episodes older than six months. Click here to become a member.

Mads Mikkelsen in Another Round; Bottom: Anders Danielsen Lie in Oslo, August 31st. On the podcast, we discuss Another Round and Oslo, August 31st.
Top: Mads Mikkelsen in Another Round; Bottom: Anders Danielsen Lie in Oslo, August 31st. On the podcast, we discuss Another Round and Oslo, August 31st.

This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney, Executive Editor Orla Smith, Associate Editor Brett Pardy, and Editor-at-Large Mary Angela Rowe.

Want to listen to the episode?

Click here to become a Seventh Row member and get access to this episode, as well as all other podcast episodes older than six months.

We discuss Oslo, August 31st (2011) on the podcast

Joachim Trier’s brilliant and moving Oslo August 31st is as much about its protagonist — the over-educated, over-privileged, recovering heroin addict Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie) — as it is about his generation and his city. Anders is our window into the city, and as a former drug dealer, he was, in the words of his former friend, “the best connected guy in Oslo” — although he spends the film feeling like the most disconnected one. When he returns to the city for one day in August, it’s from a ten-month exile in rehab. The occasion is a job interview, but he also uses the opportunity to catch up with old friends and family, in an effort to either start again or to say goodbye — he hasn’t quite decided which, having attempted suicide that morning, but changing his mind. We wait with baited breath to see which way it will go. – Alex Heeney

Read the rest of Alex’s essay on the film .

Oslo, August 31st is available on VOD, and is streaming on Kanopy in Canada

We also discuss Another Round (2020) on the podcast

“Another Round, or as my friend, fellow film critic Andrew Pope, calls it “Thomas Vinterberg’s Are Men OK?.” The answer this film gives is, very firmly, no. The four main characters, all school teachers, play out what they call a ‘social experiment’ — maintain a constant 0.05% blood-alcohol content and see if it improves their lives — which is really a very thinly veiled cry for help. Vinterberg’s film is funny and even contains some slapstick bits, like Mads Mikkelsen walking straight into a wall. But it’s also a deeply empathetic portrait of masculinity in crisis and how alcohol, while sometimes joyous, can become an unhealthy outlet for depression and pain. And what’s more, Mikkelsen gives a top form performance featuring everything from gentle crying to jazz ballet.” – Orla Smith

Thank you Andrew for inspiring the title of this episode

Another Round is available on VOD, and streaming on Crave and Hoopla in Canada; and Hulu, Kanopy, and Hoopla in the US.

Show Notes

  • This episode is part of our week long celebration of Oslo, August 31st’s 10th anniversary.
  • Oslo, August 31st was our best film of the decade. Check out our other 49 selections here.
  • Read Alex’s essay “There is a world elsewhere: exile in Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st and Louder Than Bombs“
  • Read our special issue on Louder Than Bombs, which includes a review and interviews with director Joachim Trier and cinematographer Jakob Ihre.
  • Read our in-depth guide to director Joachim Trier
  • We will be writing an ebook on Joachim Trier, to celebrate the release of his new film, The Worst Person in the World. It will be released early next year. Sign up here for updates

Related Episodes

  • Ep. 40: Dead Mothers: Stories We Tell, Louder Than Bombs, & Mouthpiece (Members Only)

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Ep. 106: Christine and Kate Plays Christine: Reviving Christine Chubbuck

We discuss Christine and Kate Plays Christine, a fiction and documentary film about Christine Chubbuck. We ask, what’s the value of telling a story in fiction versus nonfiction?

This episode is a Seventh Row members exclusive, as are all episodes older than six months. Click here to become a member.

Left: Rebecca Hall as Christine Chubbuck; Right: Kate Lyn Sheil as Kate Playing Christine

This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney, Executive Editor Orla Smith, and special guest Lena Wilson.

Want to listen to the episode?

Click here to become a Seventh Row member and get access to this episode, as well as all other podcast episodes older than six months.

Christine (Antonio Campos, 2016)

Christine follows Christine Chubbuck, played by Rebecca Hall, in the weeks leading up to her death. At the news station where she works, her boss Mike, played by Tracy Letts, is pressuring the reporters to favour blood and guts television over less sensationalised news stories, which Christine prefers. As the pressure mounts at work, in Christine’s romantic life, and with her relationship with her mother, she eventually comes to the decision to kill herself on air.

Christine is streaming on Netflix in Canada, Hulu in the US, and is available on VOD in Canada, the US, and the UK

Kate Plays Christine (Robert Greene, 2016)

 For his documentary Kate Plays Christine, Robert Greene has created a fictional construction — that he’s shooting a fiction film about Christine Chubbuck — in which to make a documentary film about an actor’s process. He follows Kate Lyn Sheil, who will be playing Christine, as she attempts to understand the woman she’s playing and get into character. Through costume and wig fittings, and interviews with experts and people who knew Chubbuck, Sheil gets increasingly frustrated by her inability to totally understand the woman and why she did what she did. She also gets frustrated by the movie she’s preparing to star in, wondering why it exists in the first place?

Kate Plays Christine is streaming on Kanopy in Canada, Hoopla and Fandor in Canada and the US, and is available on VOD in Canada, the US, and the UK

On this episode

  • Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction film (2:34)
  • Why we paired these films and the Christine Chubbuck story (5:18)
  • The mid-2010s trend of men making movies about how bad men oppress women (10:04)
  • Christine (15:16)
  • Rebecca Hall’s performance (21:50)
  • The strange questions the film asks (30:50)
  • The Florida perspective (35:03)
  • The 1970s (38:35)
  • Kate Plays Christine (41:36)
  • The film’s ending (59:52)
  • Blame on authorship and viewership (1:07:51)
  • Conclusion (1:19:19)

Show notes

  • Purchase Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction film for more on Robert Greene, the casting conceit in creative nonfiction, and much more.
  • Purchase tickets for August 29th’s livestream conversation between Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine, Bisbee ‘17) and Joe Bini (editor of twenty-seven Werner Herzog films).
  • Read Alex’s interview with Penny Lane about Nuts!
  • Read Miriam Bale’s essay in The New Republic on Christine and Kate Plays Christine
  • Read why Kate Lyn Shiel gives one of the best performances of 2016.
  • Ep. 68: Mothers struggling with addiction in Hillbilly Elegy and Down to the Bone (Members Only)
  • Ep. 67: Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris and City Hall (Members Only)
  • Ep. 12: Hail Satan? featuring director Penny Lane (Members Only)

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Ep. 97: The films and TV of Desiree Akhavan

On this episode, we discuss the work of bisexual Iranian-American filmmaker Desiree Akhavan, who is best known for the films Appropriate Behaviour and The Miseducation of Cameron Post, as well as the TV shows The Slope and The Bisexual.

This episode is a Seventh Row members exclusive, as are all episodes older than six months. Click here to become a member.

Left: Desiree Akhavan in Appropriate Behavior; Centre: Akhavan in The Bisexual; Right: Chloë Grace Moretz in The Miseducation of Cameron Post

The episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney. Executive Editor Orla Smith, and special guest Lena Wilson.

Want to listen to the episode?

Click here to become a Seventh Row member and get access to this episode, as well as all other podcast episodes older than six months.

On this episode

  • Why this episode (4:37)
  • Appropriate Behavior (9:14)
  • Akhavan’s great casting (12:23)
  • The Bisexual (13:02)
  • Bisexual identity (13:49)
  • Coming out narratives (36:44)
  • The Bisexual‘s emotional experience of casual sex (43:46)
  • Structure in Appropriate Behaviour and The Bisexual (48:50)
  • The Miseducation of Cameron Post (54:15)
  • Chloe Grace Moretz (1:22:18)

Appropriate Behavior (2014)

Appropriate Behaviour, which was released in 2014, follows Shirin, played by Desiree Akhavan. Shirin is a young bisexual woman in New York getting over a breakup with her ex-girlfriend Maxine, played by Rebecca Henderson. The film cuts between flashbacks to Shirin’s relationship with Maxine and the present day, where she’s trying to get her life together. That involves clumsily rejoining the dating scene, and switching careers from journalism to teaching preschool kids to make movies on GoPro cameras. In the film, we get a comedic insight into Shirin’s struggles dating as a bisexual woman, and her reluctance to come out to her Iranian family.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is based on Emily M. Danforth’s novel of the same name. It’s the ‘90s-set coming-of-age story of Cameron, played by Chloë Grace Moretz, a young teenage lesbian who is sent to a gay conversion therapy camp by her very Christian aunt. There she befriends misfits Jane and Adam, played by Sasha Lane and Forrest Goodluck. She also faces emotional abuse at the hands of the camp’s icy leader, Dr. Lydia Marsh, played by Jennifer Ehle, and her “ex-gay” brother turned camp counselor, Reverend Rick, played by John Gallagher Jr.

Desiree Akhavan episode notes

  • Read Lena’s 2018 review of The Bisexual on The Playlist
  • Read Orla’s interview with The Miseducation of Cameron Post DP Ashley Connor

Episodes 45 and 66, along with most episodes older than six months, are only available to Seventh Row members as part of the Premium Podcast feed. Membership is cheap and comes with a ton of benefits. Click here to find out more.

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Ep. 89: Spinster and The Forty-Year-Old Version: Coming of age at forty

This podcast episode explores two wonderful 2020 dramedies, Spinster and The Forty-Year-Old Version, about women who find themselves at a personal and career crossroads as they approach forty.

This episode is a Seventh Row members exclusive, as are all episodes older than six months. Click here to become a member.

Side by side stills from Spinster and The Forty-Year-Old Version, the two films being discussed in this podcast episode. In each still, a woman of about forty is pictured in closeup.
Ep. 89: Coming of age at forty: Spinster and The Forty-Year-Old Version
Left: Chelsea Peretti in Spinster; Right: Radha Blank in The Forty-Year-Old Version.

This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney, Executive Editor Orla Smith, and Contributing Editor Lindsay Pugh.

Want to listen to the episode?

Click here to become a Seventh Row member and get access to this episode, as well as all other podcast episodes older than six months.

On this podcast episode about Spinster and The Forty-Year-Old Version

  • The rise of films about coming of age in your thirties (5:39)
  • The Forty-Year-Old Version (11:39)
  • Spinster (31:25)
  • The films’ aesthetic choices (58:37)
  • How to pronounce Halifax (1:21:05)

The Forty-Year-Old Version (Radha Blank, 2020)

From our review: “The funny, smart, wildly entertaining The Forty-Year-Old Version is among other things, an exploration of how difficult it is for a marginalised creator to be authentic to their own voice and get paid. Blank, a playwright herself, writes the on-screen Radha as a playwright living in Harlem who won a 30 Under 30 award 10 years ago and now struggles to catch a break. She’s torn about the fate of her new play, Harlem Ave: either keep it in limbo at a small, underfunded Black-owned theatre, or sell out to big Broadway producer Josh Whitman (Reed Birney), who wants to sanitise the play for white audiences.” Read the full review.

The Forty-Year-Old Version is streaming on Netflix worldwide.

Spinster (Andrea Dorfman, 2020)

From the introduction to our interview with Andrea Dorfman: “In the press notes for Spinster, director Andrea Dorfman describes it as a film that ‘tells a story of someone who isn’t always seen — in this case, the single woman.’ Single women in films are usually partnered up by the end of the story. Spinster has been marketed as an ‘anti rom-com’, because even though it’s a heartwarming comedy about a woman’s relationships, the script steadfastly maintains that heroine Gaby (Chelsea Peretti) doesn’t need romantic love to be happy.

The film begins on Gaby’s 39th birthday and ends on her 40th; in between, we watch her realise that romantic love isn’t the be all and end all of her existence, as romantic comedies so often paint it to be. At first, Gaby is actively seeking a man, even after a series of thoroughly disappointing dates. But throughout the film, she learns that by working on strengthening the non-romantic relationships in her life, she can find joy outside of romantic love.” Read the full interview. 

Spinster is available on VOD, and streaming on Prime in the US.

Episode notes

  • Listen to our podcast episode on Kris Rey’s thirtysomethings
  • Listen to our podcast episode on abortion on screen, featuring Saint Frances
  • Read Orla’s essay on the New Wave of Midlife Coming-Of-Age Films for Girls on Tops
  • Listen to our episode on Justine Triet’s films
  • Read Orla’s interview with Spinster cinematographer Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron

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Ep. 86: Una & Slalom: Depictions of childhood sexual assault

On this episode we discuss how two films, Una and the recent Slalom, depict the trauma of childhood sexual assault. We discuss the films’ messy navigation of depiction and questions of empathy and catharsis.

This episode is a Seventh Row members exclusive, as are all episodes older than six months. Click here to become a member.

Left: Noée Abita in Slalom; Right: Rooney Mara in Una

This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney, Executive Editor Orla Smith, Associate Editor Brett Pardy, and staff writer Lena Wilson.

Want to listen to the episode?

Click here to become a Seventh Row member and get access to this episode, as well as all other podcast episodes older than six months.

On This Episode

  • Why we paired these films (5:08)
  • Explaining our snarky tone as coping mechanism and the challenges of discussing the difficult subject of childhood sexual assault (8:27)
  • Jennifer Fox’s The Tale (10:50)
  • Why do we watch so many films about terrible things that happen to women? (23:15)
  • Una (30:02)
  • Slalom (61:30)

Una (Benedict Andrews, 2017)

Based on David Harrower’s Olivier Award Winning play Blackbird, which he has also adapted for the screen, Una is about reckoning with the past by trying to break the silence. Una confronts Ray about their relationship, both angry and accusing and tender and needy. As an adult, she can understand and say the things she didn’t when they were in each other’s lives, but she’s also susceptible to trying to rewrite history, now that she’s old enough to consent. Because things ended between them so abruptly — Ray went to prison and Una was told he was disgusted with himself — there are lots of blanks to fill in their memories. They may be toxic to one another, but they’re also the only two people who went through this ordeal together.

Read the rest of Alex’s review

Una is available on VOD and to stream on Prime and Hoopla in Canada and the US and MUBI in the UK.

Slalom (Charlene Favier, 2020)

Charlène Favier’s Cannes-labelled directorial debut, Slalom, is a tense pas-de-deux between a 15-year-old professional skiing star, Lyz (Noée Abita), and her coach, Fred (Jérémie Renier). Like Una, the film is a complex exploration of the dynamics of an abusive relationship between a man in power and a child in his charge. Though it deals with sexual abuse, the film is most interested in Lyz’s perspective, avoiding judgement or sensationalism, while making Fred human if reprehensible. 

Effectively abandoned by her mother, who has accepted a job in another city, Lyz begins training at a school designed for professional skiers under Fred’s guidance. Living alone in her apartment, and without any real support network at her new school, Lyz initially struggles with Fred’s gruff manner. But when she starts succeeding on the slopes, he warms up to her, giving her special attention, training, and encouragement.

Read the rest of Alex’s review

Slalom opens April 9 in virtual cinemas in Canada and the US.

Show notes for Una and Slalom

  • Read Lena’s New York Times article on rape-revenge films
  • Read Lena’s New York Times review of Violation
  • Read Alex’s interview with Una director Benedict Andrews
  • Read Alex’s interview with The Tale director Jennifer Fox
  • Read Justin Smith’s interview with Genèse director Philippe Lesage
  • Listen to Lena guest on our episode about Paddington and Paddington 2

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Ep. 80: The Babadook and Prevenge: Motherhood in horror

February is Women in Horror month and on this podcast episode, to celebrate, we re-visit two of our favourite horror films about motherhood, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook and Alice Lowe’s Prevenge.

This episode is a Seventh Row members exclusive, as are all episodes older than six months. Click here to become a member.

Left: Alice Lowe in Prevenge; Right: Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman in The Babadook
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