Smuggler has added to its commercial/branded content directorial roster Susanne Bier who just earned her first career primetime Emmy nomination on the strength of the AMC miniseries The Night Manager starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie. She is a nominee in the Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special category, going up against Jay Roach for All the Way, Noah Harley for Fargo, and Ryan Murphy, Anthony Hemingway and John Singleton for different installments of The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.
Bier, who’s Danish, also has to her credit In a Better World which won for Denmark the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2011. In 2007, Bier directed Things We Lost in the Fire, starring Halle Berry and Benicio del Toro, the filmmaker’s first English-language feature. Prior to this as a writer/director she helmed the lauded After the Wedding (2006) which was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, and Brothers which won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
Bier also directed the 2013 winner of the European Film Award for Best Comedy, Love Is all You Need, starring Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm. In 2014, Bier directed Serena, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, and A Second Chance, which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival.
After 20 Years of Acting, Megan Park Finds Her Groove In The Director’s Chair On “My Old Ass”
Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It's not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.
She didn't set out to make a tearjerker with "My Old Ass," now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.
Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on "My Old Ass," she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn't know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.
In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he's quite cute.
At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, "The Fallout," in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn't even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie 's production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.
"They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it," Park said. "They're just really even-keeled, good people, which makes... Read More