James Vanderbilt is offering insight into how he shot the courtroom showdown in his latest film,Nuremberg.
The filmmaker, best known for writing David Fincher’s Zodiac, has come to San Sebastian Film Festival to present his two-and-a-half-hour World War II flick, following the cat-and-mouse game between Russell Crowe‘s Nazi chief Hermann Goring and Rami Malek‘s American psychologist Douglas Kelley as the U.S., U.K., France and Soviet Union prepared to put dozens of Hitler’s men on trial in 1945 and 1946.
At the movie’s press conference on Thursday, Vanderbilt (also writer on The Amazing Spider-Man and Independence Day: Resurgence) discussed filming the courtroom showdown in the feature’s final act between U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon) and Crowe as the charming, cunning Goring, whom the allies were concerned could evade justice.
Vanderbilt explained that a producer had laid out the three-day shoot, spanning 20 pages of dialogue, for the verbal dual between the two actors. “I said, Michael Shannon and Russell Crowe won’t want to do that,” Vanderbilt began. “They’re going to want to do it in one day. And she said, ‘It’s 20 pages of dialogue. That’s a terrible idea.’ So I went to both of them and I said, ‘You know, we’re supposed to shoot this over three days. They’re both like, ‘No. We’re going to do this in one. What are you talking about?’”
The director had four cameras positioned across the room, though his job was made more difficult by staying faithful to historical accuracy. “Usually, you have the lawyers that will walk around, but the way that courtroom is set up, the prosecutor never moves. It’s just shot, shot, shot, shot, shot. We set up, and we were doing 25-minute takes with no cuts,” he continued, “and they were word-perfect every time because we took all the real transcripts.”
“After the first take, the entire courtroom of extras applauded Michael and Russell,” said Vanderbilt. “Just watching those two gentlemen put on a masterclass… I’ve never shot a 25-minute take in a movie in my life. I don’t think I ever will again.” He added: “That, I think, was one of the most amazing [experiences].”
Vanderbilt was also probed on the film’s eerie reflection of current-day politics, especially in his native U.S., where the threat of authoritarianism has never loomed so large. “I started working on [this] 13 years ago, and I thought it was just an incredible story… this idea of a psychiatric [doctor] in World War II who gets the opportunity to [examine] what the nature of evil is, I felt that it was such a fascinating thing to try and capture… It is relevant now, and I think unfortunately, it’ll be relevant in the future, but it’s just such an incredible story that takes place at such an incredible time.”
Naturally, Vanderbilt was asked about Crowe’s preparation for stepping into the role of Hitler’s right-hand man, and lauded the actor’s skill. “Russell Crowe — he is one of the biggest reasons this movie exists today,” said Vanderbilt, explaining how Crowe stayed with the film through the rocky seas of acquiring and losing funding over the years. “We talked a lot about it. He said to me, ‘Look, it’s not a great mental space to live in for me.’”
But Crowe “fully committed and invested in” Nuremberg, said the director, “and did an incredible amount of research. He traveled around Germany to the different places in [Goring’s] childhood. He really put himself in depth to it. And I’m just eternally grateful for the commitment he put into this film and the work he did because he’s Russell forever. He doesn’t necessarily need to do that anymore, but he was as hungry as an actor as I’ve ever seen anyone, and that was a true gift.”
Among other films, Vanderbilt also described enjoying seeing Malek’s “inquisitiveness and magnetism” that he “doesn’t always get to use in films.” He said: “He’s never the hero.” Shannon, he continued, “is an actor’s actor.”
Nuremberg‘s supporting cast includes Leo Woodall, John Slattery, Mark O’Brien, Colin Hanks, Richard E. Grant and Wrenn Schmidt. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and hits theaters Nov. 7.
The San Sebastian International Film Festival 2025 runs Sept. 19-27.
British producer Mike Goodridge spoke to the advantages of going global on Tuesday at a San Sebastian Film Festival event.
The Good Chaos founder appeared during a fireside event for the fest’s Creative Investors’ Conference, now in its second year, where across a two-day event, a myriad of the world’s top producers come to talk funding, failures and fears as execs try to keep up with a rapidly-changing industry.
The ex-Protagonist CEO, the focus of a recent The Hollywood Reporter profile ahead of Venice, has had a wild festival run this summer with Laszlo Nemes’ historical drama Orphan, Imran Perretta’s coming-of-age debut Ish,and Helen Walsh’s erotic sophomore feature On the Sea. He comes to the fest on Spain’s northern coast to talk business, but another of his heavyweights is set to screen: Edward Berger’s Ballad of a Small Playerwith Colin Farrell.
Speaking with Wendy Mitchell, San Sebastian’s U.K. and Nordic delegate and Investor’s Conference organizer, Goodridge took attendees through his hotly anticipated projects, including Finnish action thriller Sisu: Road to Revenge, and pondered over the support for the British film industry.
“I think it’s a blessing and a curse we share the same language as the U.S.,” he said about balancing Britain’s undeniable talent and IP with Hollywood money, adding: “Most of the film technicians in the U.K. are employed by American companies. Harry Potter is a British thing, but it’s not, it’s American. Same with James Bond. So our independent films have to advocate this path through the clutter of Americanism.”
“The U.K. has a great cinema legacy,” he continued. “It’s a great cinema country. And every year, there are some fantastic new films. I’d love to make some great, big British films. I’m planning to,” he said, adding that there is “good support” for indie films from the likes of the British Film Institute (BFI) and BBC Film.
When pressed to answer whether he agrees that the U.K. is not “traditionally a great co-producer” and that Goodridge is one of two or three producers in Britain working globally, he responded: “That’s my case really, is to look internationally. It’s almost been my interest to look at the world and the new voices and styles — of Hollywood, too, but I don’t think I would make films in the U.S. particularly well… I much prefer exploring the world, and I’m very comfortable doing that, and I plug in the U.K. financing whenever I can.”
Though the travel brings perks, the exec also admitted to facing an enormous amount of difficulty while trying to make Ballad in Macau, China, where the film is set. “Shanghai Surprise (1986), remember that? With Madonna. Indiana Jones: The Temple of Doom (1984), Now You See Me 2 (2016),” Goodridge listed as films that have all been shot in Macau. “[But] it was one of the most challenging things I ever had to do, get that film made.”
He said: “It’s a very small city. It’s a city state, really. It’s a population of 600,000, so it’s very hard to kind of build up an indigenous industry. You go through Hong Kong, which is often not the easiest, because they don’t know much about Macau either… Edward would point at a piece of land that he wanted to shoot on, we couldn’t find out who owned the land. Nobody in government, nobody knew. [Laughs.] So we couldn’t get permission to shoot that.” Ballad is backdropped by the city’s infamous casinos, which also proved tasking. “Shooting the casinos was incredibly challenging,” Goodridge said, “because at any moment you’re shooting, there’s a loss of revenue to them.”
Goodridge went into more detail across the session about working with Sean Baker and why attracting a good cast will always start with the film’s director. He touched on his extensive ambitions to get into television producing and teased a little about an upcoming rom-com he’s working on called Paris-Hollywood, adapted from the novel by French film critic Cécile Mury. Paris-based Haut et Court and Good Chaos, two of the founding members of the Fremantle-backed indie production collective The Creatives, secured the film rights to Mury’s work in February.
The San Sebastian International Film Festival 2025 runs Sept. 19-27.
The Danish-Norwegian filmmaker, an Academy Award nominee for his 2021 romantic dramedy The Worst Person in the World, is also known for Reprise (2006), Oslo, August 31st (2011) and Louder Than Bombs (2015). His most recent project, winner of Cannes’ Grand Prix this year Sentimental Value, is screening here at the 73rd San Sebastian Film Festival.
The film follows Trier’s frequent collaborator Renate Reinsve as Nora who, along with her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), are faced to confront their strained relationship with their father, a fading director named Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard). Elle Fanning also stars in the movie as a U.S. actress, Rachel Kemp, hoping to be in Borg’s next feature.
Trier spoke — and Reinsve, in attendance, watched on — at the discussion in San Sebastian where he fielded a myriad of questions about his journey to film stardom and working predominantly in Europe. The director explained how he set the precedent to have final cut on all his films when, in the wake of the success of Reprise, he was tasked with finding a U.S. studio to work with.
“I need final cut, I’ve had it since film one,” he began. “To me, it’s a moral implication of taking responsibility for what the actors give a director — if they show their emotions, their bodies, whatever — we created a movie [and] I carry the responsibility of what they bring to the final product. No one that sits in some studio capacity and invests money should decide that, in my opinion. That’s not how art is made… [I have] a moral responsibility towards the cinematographer, maybe being away from his or her family for months on end to work on the vision that me, as a director, and all the others in the team created. To have an external power of financial interest come fuck around with that material diminishes the trust between us and the group.”
“I’m not going to shame people,” he added, “because it’s damn hard to make a film and many, many, many films are made every year where the director didn’t have final cut, and they’re wonderful films.”
Trier admitted that demanding final cut made it “tough” to get a film financed and while some U.S. producers showed immense support, Reprise was made out of Oslo, Norway and in collaboration with France. “I’ve worked in the European financing system my whole career and I’m super happy about it,” he added.
The financing system for cinema in Europe, while it has given Trier “a platform to express myself very freely,” he also believes it is constantly under political threat. “Right-wing political movements are always trying to diminish the idea of soft money support for the arts across most countries in Europe… We need support. And most art has always been supported by someone with an intention of not just making money, but supporting expression and artistic endeavors.”
Skarsgard and Fanning in ‘Sentimental Value’.
Courtesy of Neon
At the same time, Trier said the need to have total creative control over his films is something that producers should be in support of. “If you [look at] film history, a lot of the films that commercially worked have also been made by directors that are deeply involved in the script process, deeply involved in the editing and has had a sense of control — the achievements of personal expression is at the core of some of the most successful films, financially.”
Trier continued that his championing of his actors should be mirrored by financiers’ attitudes towards filmmakers. “My approach to shielding, protecting, loving, nourishing [actors] is how producers and financiers should work with directors. Don’t employ directors unless you really want to support them and love them and help them, and [same with] writers and editors… I want Renate to do well, I want her to do something wonderful and I’m proud of Renate as a director. I think financiers should feel like that with directors and the creative team.”
Across the session, Trier covered an extensive range of topics, from grieving the late David Lynch and the intersection of film and love (“tenderness is the new punk!”), to believing in the power of the “European auteur” and the cinematic universes they build. When discussing Sentimental Value, Trier, father to two young children, admitted his own fear of failure as a parent played a huge role in writing Skarsgard’s part.
“I said going in, ‘I’m really scared of failing as a father.’ And it’s very symbolic to make this film for me, because I don’t want to be Gustav,” he said. “In Norway, we have had a lot of progression [for] female directors over the last 15, 20 years, and that has been great for us male directors too, because we have gotten a focus on [a] good set culture, where the macho energy is lessened and it’s not just all tough guys.”
This has allowed filmmakers in Norway to have “private conversations” about balancing being an artist with having children, he added. “Actually, the feminist discourse around cinema has helped men also allow ourselves bigger freedom of figuring out how we make movies [as parents].”
The San Sebastian International Film Festival 2025 runs Sept. 19-27.
Joachim Lafosse’s San Sebastian-bound feature Six Days in Spring is admittedly a deeply personal project.
French actress Eye Haïdara (The Nannies, C’est la vie!) leads the Belgian director’s new film. She stars as Sana, a mother struggling to provide her 10-year-old twins (Teodor and Leonis Pinero Müller in their film debuts) with a spring vacation. When their plans collapse, she secretly takes them to a luxury villa on the French Riviera owned by her former in-laws. Over six days, joy and anxiety collide as the family hides in plain sight in what can be described as a biographical piece of filmmaking for Lafosse.
“After my parents divorced, my mother had money problems,” he confesses to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the world premiere of Six Days in Spring in competition at the Spanish film fest on Sept. 20. He’s no stranger to the festival circuit with 2012’s Our Children making a splash in Cannes and 2006’s Private Property with Isabelle Huppert debuting in Venice. It’s his sixth film to screen at San Sebastian, and perhaps his most intimate one yet.
“She had to be working a lot, to make ends meet, but she wanted us to have a vacation,” he continues about his mother’s influence on the new movie, a France-Luxembourg-Belgium co-production. With his mother and brother, Lafosse went to his grandparents’ house, but the three of them were forced to use candles for light and avoid running hot water, lest his father found out.
Six Days in Spring
Publicity
“My grandparents, they were wealthy, they had money, and suddenly my mother… she was not related to them, and [so] she didn’t have money,” Lafosse says. “A few months earlier, we were at the beautiful house and we had the right to be there. In that moment, my brother and I understood the logic of social class.” The crux of this film, he adds, is an analysis of “at what moment you stop belonging to a family.”
It almost became a cathartic outlet for the director, who was hoping for a chance to illustrate the emotional violence of divorce on screen. “If you are separated as a couple, you are still parents [and] you still have to raise those kids together and for those children to go on holidays.”
Haïdara’s tender, considered performance anchors Lafosse’s film. He considers why she was so right for the role of Sana. “I’m not a sociologist. I’m a filmmaker,” he responds. “And for me, a filmmaker is somebody who writes the characters. I know [Sana’s] story — she was living with her husband before they separated, and I was looking for an actress who was moving, who could [show us] some kind of resistance.”
On taking his personal story and setting it within a Black family, Lafosse admits there’s something political there — and the issue is not confined to his native Belgium or France. “We have to consider each story on an individual basis… but cinema is always political.” He continues: “The success, for me, is not to show what’s happened with the Black people in this area. But my [hope] is that audience and critics, they see exactly what’s happened. They recognize the situation — that more and more people are having to hide. It’s not only [happening in] the U.S.”
Lafosse hopes his new film will prompt audiences to draw their own conclusions here on Spain’s northern coast. He lauds San Sebastian’s directorial team, including fest boss José Luis Rebordinos, who spoke to THR about the fest’s eclectic lineup earlier in the week. “They feel passion, real passion for cinema,” continues Lafosse. “Here, you have the possibility to see the best movie of the year.”
Six Days in Spring premieres in competition at the 2025 San Sebastian International Film Festival, running Sept. 19-27. Watch the trailer here.
To pull off an uncomfortable dark comedy like Bad Apples, director Jonatan Etzler had one actress in mind — and luckily for him, Saoirse Ronan was game.
“We sent it to her and within a week, she responded,” the Swedish director tells The Hollywood Reporter about recruiting the Irish Oscar nominee for his English-language debut. “She was so keen on doing it because it’s not her usual character to play. She’s been playing a lot of good-hearted people. I think she was very keen on playing an unsympathetic character.”
Ronan’s unsympathetic Maria is a struggling teacher in Etzler’s first English-language feature, set to open San Sebastian Film Festival’s New Director’s strand on Friday, Sept. 19. Adapted by Jess O’Kane and based on Rasmus Andersson’s debut novel De Oönskade, Bad Apples relocates the story from Sweden to south England in this examination of how we treat society’s most vulnerable.
Burnt out and fed up with her untameable class of 10-year-olds, Maria tussles with an increasingly naughty student, Danny (played wonderfully by young newcomer Eddie Waller), and makes a rash decision to keep him captive in her basement. Nia Brown stars as Pauline, a deceptively sweet classmate of Danny’s, and Game of Thrones breakout Jacob Anderson as fellow teacher Sam.
“What it does is it poses a lot of questions and asks us to think about how we are complicit in the suffering of others,” says Swedish director Etzler, known for One More Time (2023), Swimmer (2020) and Get Ready With Me (2018). “I think it asks us about all these moral compromises that we do every day in order to to live.”
At the same time, Etzler makes sure to note, it’s also a lighthearted look at a mess of a school teacher. “It would be such a depressing film if it weren’t funny and if it didn’t have so much lightness and entertainment in how it tackles these issues,” says the filmmaker. He’s just premiered Bad Apples to a North American audience in Toronto and now comes to San Sebastian hoping to see a similarly positive response from the Europeans.
Ahead of San Sebastian, Etzler unpacks the making of Bad Apples: On recruiting Ronan, why Sweden and Britain share a sense of dark humor, and the appeal of making movies in English: “There’s such a bigger variety, and there’s lots more possibilities in what you can do.”
Let’s start with why you wanted to adapt Rasmus’ book as your English-language debut.
I was really struck when I read Rasmus’ book, particularly with the moral dilemma that’s at the center of the story: How do we deal with people who can’t fit into society? I had been a teacher, and I knew how tough it was and how vulnerable you are in front of a group of children. They can be quite good at finding your soft spots. So I felt personally connected to it, but I also felt like it was such a good premise for a film. I thought the U.K. was a good place to set it, because I think the U.K. school system is quite similar to Sweden — it has the same dysfunctions.
(L-R) Oskar Pimlott, Jonatan Etzler, and Jacob Anderson attend the TIFF premiere ‘Bad Apples’ on Sept. 7, 2025.
Dominik Magdziak/Getty Images
My agent found a producer who wanted to do the film, and he knew (screenwriter) Jess (O’Kane). I thought she was great. She did a great job adapting it to the U.K. setting. She’s had experience working as a teacher as well. The U.K. has a great tradition of dark comedies. I think there are lots of similarities in the mentality as well, between the Swedes and the Brits.
What kind of similarities?
We have a lot of the same humor. We appreciate dark humor a lot more; we appreciate when a film can make you a bit uncomfortable.
Did you always picture Saoirse for the role of Maria?
Saoirse was my top choice. We sent it to her and within a week, she responded, which was great. She really wanted to meet, and she was so keen on doing it because it’s not her usual character to play — she’s been playing a lot of good-hearted people. I think she was very keen on playing an unsympathetic character.
I talked to her about it, and I said, “Yeah, but your character in Lady Birdwas a bit unsympathetic at times.” And she said, “Yeah, in Lady Bird, she jumped out of the car. She didn’t lock up a child in her basement.” I think she was happy to do this part.
And, of course, I had watched all the great films that she’s done, so I’ve been a big fan of hers. She’s one of the greatest actors of her generation. [She’s] really funny. She has this great comedic quality and she has a sense of finding the weird behavioral mannerisms that [she] could make fun of. She made Maria feel both normal and also a bit weird.
Are we meant to have a completely unsympathetic opinion of Maria? There were times I felt some sympathy creeping in…
No, I don’t think it’s black and white at all. I think what she does is obviously unsympathetic when she locks up Danny in the basement, but I think that’s also one of the reasons I wanted Saoirse because I think the audience would sympathize with her and follow her on the journey a lot longer than with anybody else, because she is very sympathetic as a person.
And I must say I was so impressed with the acting on display from the kids — it must be tough to film with children.
It was reaally positive experience. It was really hard finding the children. There are lots of great child actors in the U.K., but it’s was to hard to someone, for Danny, who has this anger right underneath his skin. Without that quality, the film wouldn’t work. But I think they were so great and they immediately turned very professional as well. They learned all the tricks of the trade. I found it very fun. Working with child actors, it’s usually about trying to make it feel like a game and to let them be free and improvise.
I think it’s a great commentary on how we neglect our children. It’s interesting to see Danny and Pauline as both sides of the same coin, where they both feel unloved by the respective adults in their lives.
I agree with you that Danny and Pauline are really quite similar as characters, but I also think Maria is unloved by the ones she wants to be loved by. They’re a trio of people who can’t fit in, which I think [is what] the film is about, really: How do we deal with people who can’t fit into society?
It poses a lot of questions and it asks us to think about how we are complicit in the suffering of others. I think it asks us about all these moral compromises that we make every day in order to live. To me, that’s quite relevant to today. That’s how fascism takes hold, because we learn to live with these everyday compromises.
It’s interesting how everything always comes back to politics — there is also something to be said for the underfunding of British schools and the lack of help for vulnerable children. Did you shoot on location in the U.K.?
Yeah. The shoot was 32 days. We shot it in Bristol and the surrounding areas, and we also went there to do research. Me and Saoirse visited the school before the shoot. And we had teacher consultants and things like that. We had one studio build, which is the basement. It’s made by Jacqueline Abrahams who’s an amazing production designer. She has such a funny, quirky sense of detail. If you watch the film again, you can find small signs and stuff everywhere in the film. That was great fun, and also I really enjoyed shooting in the U.K. People are so professional.
This film premiered in Toronto, but it’s also heading to San Sebastian to open the New Directors’ strand. Have you been before?
I’ve never been to the San Sebastian Film Festival, so I’m really looking forward to it. I heard it’s really, really nice and [that] it’s a great city with great people and great food as well. I’m also very happy we got invited there. What I’m curious about is seeing how the European audience responds to it, now that I’ve seen a sample of the North American response.
What are you working on next?
I have a few projects in development. There’s one, I can’t tell you a lot, but it’s a surveillance thriller set in the modern digital age.
Another English-language film? Are you planning to keep making English-language films for the foreseeable future?
Yeah, I think I’m going to make more English-language films. I’m also going to make films in Sweden. Sweden is great and we’ve done lots of great films, but it’s also a very small country, so it’s quite hard to do something that’s a bit out of the box, a bit daring. And I’ve loved making films in the English language. There’s such a bigger variety, and there’s lots more possibilities in what you can do.
San Sebastian Film Festival 2025 runs Sept. 19-27.