Filmmaker

But instead of this sort of tragic victim narrative, Raina is chaotic, theatrical, and aggressively alive.

Sabrina is an editor-turned-director and was named in Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces series for 2025.

With Lockjaw, she took an 11-day shooting schedule and 80 pages of a script to create a film that is as much about the self-destructive mental loops of shame and anger as it is about a wild, disastrous night out.

We're going to be talking about the art of directing big performances with physical limitations, the necessity of a chaotic female lead, my favorite, and how her background in the edit bay prepared her to pull off a feature on a sprint of a schedule.

But yeah, but yeah, I mean, on airlines, I'm a big advocate of that.

I've written about that for Filmmaker Magazine before, because, you know, they're looking for content too.

And specifically movies, because audiences on airlines, like can't commit to binge a series and only watch two episodes on a flight.

You're like, well, why did I start there? Yeah,

It's just a way to create an in-group and an out-group.

And like we talked about in the cold open it's unclear whether it's real and you said you're still unclear whether it's real or not but or like is this something that the group is just assigning to eli so that like they can pretend they have a justification for treating him so terribly I did come across an interview that Polinger did with Filmmaker Magazine, and apparently he says The Plague is based on a game that he had experienced at camp himself as a kid.

So there's some precedent there in his own autobiographical experience, and some of this film is quasi-autobiographical from what he says in the interview.

But here, for us, for us as viewers who don't know that, who aren't reading interviews with the director, it's...

I love that it's very much a philosophical and existential crisis.

And I, You know, the director in Filmmaker Magazine said he was very much inspired by the movie Slacker and he wanted to shift from a horror movie into a hangout movie.

And that very much is what happens here.

Yeah.

They've always worked in the film industry.

They were, like, a PA for the Safdie brothers actually, and they wrote for Filmmaker Magazine 'cause they have a bachelor's in film from Boston University, and eventually did make a film with-

A Self-Induced Hallucination in 2018.

They have always loved a long title.

Uh, oh, the autobiographical elements.

Schoenbrun, uh, mentioned in an interview with Filmmaker Magazine that the th- a big theme is learning to enjoy sex after transition and, like, noting the difficulty of having good sex in the wrong body pre-transition.

So that and just...

And people's relationship to sex and, you know, the main character is having a hard time just enjoying sex.

Always so many.

[laughs] Ah, and joining us to go through it all, returning guest to the podcast, a beloved friend of the show, Filmmaker Magazine columnist, Tyler Coates.

Hello, Tyler.

Hello.

Uh-

Thank you for having me

... everyone can find you at Filmmaker Magazine, and for those of you listening, stay tuned.

I'll be right back with my conversation with Noah Wyle.

Mm-hmm.

The filmmaker has to feel comfortable and want to return to your festival.

One time, a filmmaker, um, was quoted in, um, I think it was Filmmaker Magazine or something years ago, and they said, um, OCMFF was like film festival summer camp.

Oh.

Because they would come back into town and see all their friends.