#507 - The Cast of The Curse and Pham Thien An on Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell

This week we’re excited to present two conversations, the first from the 61st New York Film Festival with Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell director Pham Thien An and the second with Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder, Benny Safdie, Nizhonniya Luxi Austin, and Dave McCary of the new Showtime series The Curse. Winner of the prestigious Camera d’Or for best first film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the enthralling Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell from Vietnamese filmmaker Pham Thien An is a reverie on faith, loss, and nature expressed with uncommon invention and depth. It’s a simple tale told with visual complexity: after a car accident claims the life of his sister-in-law and leaves his 5-year-old nephew an orphan, a thirty something man named Thien (Le Phong Vu) leaves Saigon for a trip back to his rural hometown. During his meditative, wandering visit, Thien wrestles with his own agnosticism in the face of others’ religious beliefs, summons memories of his long-disappeared brother, and reconnects with a former girlfriend who now lives as a nun at a Christian church and school. With its drifting camera, evocative use of natural light, and gratifying perambulatory nature, this is a film with the power to readjust one’s perceptions of the world around us. An NYFF61 Currents selection. In this brilliantly discomfiting collaboration between Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, Fielder and Emma Stone play married entrepreneurs (don’t call them gentrifiers!) who flip houses and convert them into eco-friendly homes for the struggling residents of Española, New Mexico—all for an HGTV-style reality show. Following the world premieres of episodes 1–3 at the 61st New York Film Festival, Film at Lincoln Center is pleased to present the remaining seven episodes from this genre-defying, riotously funny series, directed by Fielder and David and Nathan Zellner. An NYFF61 Spotlight selection. Get tickets to Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, opening at Film at Lincoln Center on Jan. 19: filmlinc.org/cocoon