Fresh Eyes
Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch offer exciting visions for cinema’s future
BLITZ BAZAWULE “The Color Purple”
After first being “converted to the religion of cinema” by evangelicals screening Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” in his native Ghana, Bazawule’s 2018 debut, “The Burial of Kojo,” garnered him immediate praise; by 2020, he had directed episodes of Ava Duvernay’s series “Cherish the Day,” Beyoncé’s feature-length album video, “Black Is King” and was hired to direct the musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s classic “The Color Purple.” He admits that the prospect of tackling the iconic property was daunting at first.
“When you get the opportunity to even pitch for it, the first question becomes, ‘What are you possibly going to add to this canon?’ That was my first biggest piece of anxiety,” says Bazawule.
He turned to Walker’s novel for inspiration. “I started looking for something that may have not been explored as much,” he recalls, “and I found it on the first page. When she says, ‘Dear God, I’m 14 years old,’ I realized that there was an opportunity in Celie’s headspace, because anyone who could write letters to God has an imagination.”
His biggest priority became figuring out how to lean into that imagination. “How do I give the audience an insight into how Celie overcame her trauma by going through her healing journey?” he asked. But before Bazawule could start answering that question, the pandemic shut things down. “We were going to shoot about three months after greenlight, but it was just not plausible because of COVID,” he says.
According to the filmmaker, the delay was a blessing in disguise. “I really had time to really home in on who I wanted, the locations I needed, the team I needed to create with,” he says. “Being prepared is the most critical part of the job.” — Paula Hendrickson
Reps: Agent: CAA; Management: M88; Legal: Granderson Des Rochers
Influences: Mikhail Kalatozov’s “Soy Cuba,” Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” his grandmother
ILKER ÇATAK “The Teachers’ Lounge”
A complex drama that compellingly assays issues of race, class, age and shifting power dynamics, “The Teachers’ Lounge” picked up two honors after its world premiere at Berlinale 2023, and then swept the top three prizes (plus an actress trophy for Leonie Benesch) at the German Film Awards.
The trajectory of awards recognition for his film, now Germany’s Oscar entry, has opened a whole set of new doors, admits co-writer and director Çatak. “My next project got financed much, much quicker,” he says.
Like one of his films’ characters, a sense of curiosity and cautious optimism informs Çatak’s new reality. “I’m trying to keep my cool and not get carried away,” Çatak says. “Success is great, but at the same time it creates expectations and more pressure.”
A diverse, international roster of formative cinematic influences as well as a keen sense of the complexities of social identity (he was born in Berlin to Turkish parents), informed Çatak’s love of films that interrogate the unusual intersections of shared social spaces — asking questions rather than providing pat answers.
That sense of inquisitiveness certainly describes “The Teachers’ Lounge,” which tells the story of an idealistic educator who, after a series of petty thefts at her school, tries to mediate between outraged parents, colleagues and students, only to find herself besieged on all sides.
Next up is “Yellow Letters,” starring Tansu Biçer and Gizem Erdem, which Çatak describes as a personal story about modern-day Turkey, told through the lens of two artists who lose their jobs. Everyday struggles eventually give way, he says, to “a point where they’re faced with a sell-off of their ideals, both as parents and as artists.”
— Brent Simon
Reps: Agency: UTA; Management: Black Bear; Legal: Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman Influences: Gus Van Sant, Steven Soderbergh, Christian Petzold, Nuri Bilge Ceylan