INSIDE A WORLD OF UPHEAVAL
The Envelope welcomes a select audience of Hollywood guild members and Oscar voters during awards season to consider some of the year’s most talked about films with the Envelope Screening Series. Each screening is followed by a Q&A with the cast and filmmakers moderated by an L.A. Times journalist. For those of you unable to attend the screening, The Envelope brings you highlights right here. And for videos of the events, go to latimes.com/screenings.¶ We kicked the series off last month with two films. ¶ “Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS,” chronicles the ongoing chaos in that country. For some of their footage, directors Sebastian Junger and Nick Quested had one brave family living under Taliban control filming themselves and smuggling the footage out. The situation is so dire there, they noted, that showing all of it on screen would have been too much.¶ The feature film “Novitiate,” directed by Maggie Betts, follows a young woman (Margaret Qualley) entering a convent that is struggling with the radical doctrinal changes brought by the Vatican II council, including the dismissal of the idea that nuns are married to God. The Mother Superior (Melissa Leo) strongly resists the changes.
“You need to get people’s attention about something that’s this grave, but if you go too far, people shut down. If you present an image that is just too gruesome, people will not remain open and then the conversation’s over.” — Sebastian Junger
“All these people chose to fight this war with a camera, not a rifle.” — Nick Quested “I got in the head of a woman in her 50s whose man, God, is leaving her and she’s falling apart.” —Maggie Betts “The scenes of praying in bed were like talking to your boyfriend lying beside you.” —Margaret Qualley