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Mike Kaspar

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Cinemafile showcases the very best in independent, documentary and foreign films through our conversations with the more than 2,000 filmmakers who made them. Through Cinemafile we will do our best to bring the most interesting and accomplished filmmakers from around the world to your attention.

−20 h

How To Divorce During the War - Director Andrius Blaževičius

Vilnius, 2022. High-flying executive Marija (Zygimante Elena Jakstaite) chooses the worst possible moment to inform her husband Vytas (Vee-tus) (Marius Repsys) she wants a divorce: just one day before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Suddenly the couple must navigate the process of separation as it collides with a refugee and mid-life crisis. A struggling film director, Vytas is put into a tight spot by having to move in with his Russophile parents, while Marija struggles to find her footing as the war affects both her business and home life. Packed with surprises along with much heartache and soul searching, Andrius Blaževičius’ nuanced and timely family drama skillfully depicts the fallout of a marriage against the backdrop of extraordinary events with humor and compassion. already a 2026 Sundance Award-Winner, How To Divorce During the War, was selected as 2026 Lithuania's Oscar entry for this year's Best International Feature Film. About the filmmaker - Director Andrius Blaževičius was born in Vilnius, June 26, 1985, studied Culture History and Anthropology at Vilnius University. After a while, Andrius switched to Film Directing studies at KIMO, Lithuanian National Film School, where he graduated with an MA in 2011. Blaževičius’ debut feature film THE SAINT (2016) premiered at Warsaw IFF and Busan IFF, won six national awards and became one of the most appreciated Lithuanian independent films at the national box office with 47K admissions in total. His sophomore film RUNNER (2021) premiered at Karlovy Vary IFF with the main actress Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė being awarded as a Shooting Star by European Film Promotion. RUNNER received two Lithuanian Film Academy awards - for the main and the supporting actresses. His third feature fom HOW TO DIVORCE DURING THE WAR (2026) premiered at Sundance Film Festival's, World Dramatic Competition.
−6 d

Never Stop Chasing - Director Ken Cole & Subject Reed Timmer

In the immersive documentary Never Stop Chasing, legendary storm chaser Reed Timmer pursues a life hunting the world’s most violent weather. Haunted by the tragic death of his mentor, Tim Samaras, in the historic 2013 El Reno tornado, and the sudden loss of his best friend and long-time chase partner, Joel Taylor, Reed’s life on the edge takes a severe emotional toll. Driven by an unshakeable compulsion, he pushes his mind and body to the absolute limit in pursuit of the perfect storm. Operating the custom-built, armored "Dominator 3," Reed and his eclectic crew—Connor, Mike, Edgar, and "Local Man"—plunge directly into the impact zones of apocalyptic supercells. Despite holding a Ph.D. in meteorology, Reed’s highly aggressive intercept tactics constantly put him at odds with a traditional scientific establishment that frequently dismisses his controversial approach. The film captures the duality of their extreme lifestyle: the euphoric highs of intercepting a tornado alongside an embedded New York Times reporter, and the terrifying lows of being overtaken by a massive wedge tornado inside their vehicle. About the filmmaker -Reed Timmer is one of the world's most recognized and accomplished storm chasers, known for pioneering extreme intercepts with his armored vehicle, the Dominator 3. A meteorologist with over 8.6 million social media followers, Timmer, who has a Ph.D. in meteorology, rose to global fame on Discovery Channel's “Storm Chasers “and has since set records in close-range tornado intercepts. His work and persona directly inspired the Tyler Owens character in the 2024 blockbuster Twisters. About the filmmaker - Ken Cole is a documentary filmmaker who holds a degree in meteorology and has spent more than two decades chasing severe weather alongside Reed Timmer. His prior films include the PBS documentary Tornado Glory (2003) and the hit independent documentary series 'Tornado Chasers' (which streamed across Hulu, Prime Video, and Tubi), drawing on two decades of footage, friendship, and firsthand experience inside the world's most dangerous storms.
13 aug.

To Use a Mountain - Director Casey Carter

In 1982, six rural communities across the United States were notified that all of the nation’s nuclear waste might be buried beneath them forever. Faced with a mandate to isolate the waste for 10,000 years, the Department of Energy mapped, analyzed, and assembled its assessments, while the unsuspecting stewards of sacrificial territory found themselves fighting for their homes, health, history and dignity. Against the impassive logic of government analysis and archives, TO USE A MOUNTAIN assembles a people’s history of resistance and stewardship through a visceral journey across the landscapes, ecologies, and personal histories of the candidate sites. Farmers, miners, citizen scientists, Native American leaders, and activists—each with a story bound to this enduring threat—stand in stark contrast to the cold, silent machinery of bureaucracy, in a meditation on resistance, memory, and the timeless struggle between power and place. About the filmmaker - Casey Carter is a filmmaker and interdisciplinary designer whose work engages nonfiction storytelling in film and video, photography, data visualization, and cartography. His work centers on themes of governmentality, geography, environmentalism, and personal subjectivities. His short films, TWO BOYS AND A DREAM (2023), TWO PRISONS (2020), and THE RIGHTS OF NATURE (2019), have screened at festivals including Revolutions Per Minute, SF Shorts, Salem, Ashland Independent, and Hong Kong Film Art. He holds a B.S. in Physics and B.S. in Photography from Middle Tennessee State University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan. His work has been supported through grants and fellowships from institutions including Sundance Documentary Film Program, IDA, UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art, New York Foundation for the Arts, The Marble House Project, Monson Arts, The Redford Center, SFFILM, Flies Collective, and others. He is the director, cinematographer, and editor of his first feature film, TO USE A MOUNTAIN, which premiered at the prestigious Visions du Réel, where it won a Special Jury Award, and has gone on to collect accolades at film festivals across the globe.
12 aug.

Our Hero, Balthazar - Director Oscar Boyson & Co-screenwriter Ricky Camilleri

The audacious coming-of-age story that expertly balances pitch-black humor with a sense of creeping menace, Our Hero, Balthazar is an engrossing modern fable about the influence of social media, isolation, and glorified violence on modern adolescence. Showcasing “the superb acting” (Deadline) of Jaeden Martell (St. Vincent, It) and “transformative” (Deadline) Asa Butterfield (“Sex Education,” Ender’s Game), the directorial debut of Oscar Boyson (producer of Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems and Good Time) is a must-see conversation-starter that will be available for digital rental and purchase on all major platforms on August 11, 2026 from WG Pictures and Radial Entertainment. About the filmmaker - Oscar Boyson is a director and producer whose work explores the intersections of culture, technology, and urban life. He is known for his creative collaborations and innovative approach to storytelling. As a producer, his credits include several acclaimed films with directors like the Safdie Brothers and Noah Baumbach. In addition to his film work, Oscar has directed numerous short films and documentaries that investigate global trends and the future of cities. Our Hero, Balthazar marks a significant entry in his directorial career, blending his unique visual sensibility with a deeply human story. Boyson is a writer, director, feature film producer, and co-founder of Elara Pictures, NY. Having produced for Casey Neistat in the early days of YouTube he went on to produce iconic indie hits ‘Frances, Ha!’ And ‘Mistress America’ for Noah Baumbach and the acclaimed ‘Good Time’ and ‘Uncut Gems’ for The Safdie Brothers with 2022’s ‘Funny Pages’ on this years festival circuit. A true cinephile with an encyclopaedic knowledge of film and art, Oscar is able to pivot between documentary and scripted narrative. About the filmmaker - Ricky Camilleri is a host of HuffPost Live, The Huffington Post's award-winning live streaming network, where he specializes in leading conversations with members of the TV and film community. As a filmmaker, Ricky co-founded CamLin Productions in 2010 and his work has been showcased at film festivals around the world. When he's not on HuffPost Live, Ricky can be seen on CBS, NBC and various other TV networks discussing Hollywood and entertainment news.
11 aug.

Union County - Director Adam Meeks

Will Poulter and Noah Centineo give pitch perfect performances in Adam Meeks's Sundance hit, Union County. Playing brothers Cody and Jack Parsons, each navigating a court-mandated drug rehabilitation program in a pocket of rural Ohio hit hard by the opioid epidemic. Provided with hope for the first time since their struggles began and with the support of a tireless counselor (Annette Deao), the brothers work toward a brighter, sober future. Poulter and Centineo blend seamlessly with a supporting cast composed predominantly of non-professional actors as they share their actual experiences, pain, and optimism as they, themselves, navigate the program. Ohio-born director and screenwriter Adam Meeks creates a film imbued with realism for an honest, compassionate portrait of a battle being fought across America and the solidarity that flowers on its front lines. About the filmmaker - Writer & Director Adam Meeks is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker. His short film Union County (2020) premiered at the 70th Berlinale and screened at festivals worldwide. He is a 2023 Film Independent Screenwriting Lab Fellow, a 2021 Yaddo Artist-in-Residence, and a graduate of NYU Tisch. Union County (2025) is his first feature film.
7 aug.

Winter Hymns - Director Nathan Deming

WINTER HYMNS takes shape in a single hospital room on a gray winter day, Dr. Linda Vobernik (Colleen Madden) meets a series of patients and families confronting the end of life. Among them are a farmer who refuses to accept his failing body, an English teacher clinging to her students’ futures, and a young electrical line worker whose cancer has stolen his own. As the day unfolds, the room itself feels suspended - somewhere between hospital and afterlife - while Dr. Vobernik’s encounters grow increasingly intimate, testing her faith in the work and revealing the strange beauty that can emerge when life narrows to its final moments. Director and screenwriter Nathan Deming joins us for a lively conversation on casting Colleen Madden and how he was able to bring together the cinematic elements needed to actualize his superbly empathetic and probing film on the inevitable. About the filmmaker - Director, screenwriter Nathan Deming is a filmmaker from Wisconsin, based in Los Angeles. A graduate of the London Film School where he studied with British filmmaker Mike Leigh, his work blends European and American influences with a focus on character and place. His feature “Speaking in Tongues” premiered at the Austin Film Festival and is available on Amazon and Apple TV. Alongside other features, he is in the midst of a decade-long film series called The Year Project, exploring life in Wisconsin month by month, most recently with “February”.
6 aug.

Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp, Co-directors Matt Hinton & Erica Hinton

Erica and Matt Hinton's are the filmmaking team behind this endlessly fascinating documentary Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp. It is the first feature documentary to explore the history, music, and traditions of Sacred Harp singing, the oldest distinctively American form of music. This haunting music has survived over 200 years tucked away from sight in the rural deep South and occurs mostly at community singing events, which typically include anywhere from a dozen to a couple of hundred singers. The events, called “singings," emphasize participation over consumption since they are not generally performed for an audience. Sacred Harp singers begin each song by intoning syllables which are represented by specific “shapenotes” in their hymnal. To the casual observer, it is some foreign, unintelligible language, but to the Sacred Harp singers, it is the key that unlocks mysteries: songs of both beauty and sorrow, of life and of death, songs that cause feet to stomp and tears to flow, often at the same time. What is Sacred Harp Singing? Sacred Harp singing is a form of a cappella shape-note hymn singing that preserves some of the earliest distinctively American music. Sacred Harp has persisted for almost two centuries in the Deep South, particularly in the context of community singing events that emphasize participation over consumption, as it is not generally performed for an audience. The tradition uses shape notes, in which triangle, circle, square, and diamond shapenote heads are paired with the syllables fa, sol, la, and mi to represent the notes in the scale. Sacred Harp is one of the open secrets of American music. A New Revision - Awake, My Soul originally aired nationwide on PBS in 2008 and was been featured in TIME, Paste Magazine, NY Times, Pitchfork, SPIN and on NPR. Awake, My Soul, the 2025 Revision, is the result of the long-term desire to make the film available again for a new generation. “The original film was released at precisely the best time and worst time," according to co-director/ editor, Matt Hinton. “It was the best time because there was still a strong monoculture: if a film aired on PBS, lots of people saw it. It was also a period of physical media, so we sold tons of DVDs. But on the other hand, it was the worst time to have made a film– from the time we began production to the end of post-production, the culture was moving from standard definition to high definition, so within a year of its release, very many people owned high definition TVs. Nothing makes a standard definition film look standard like high definition.
4 aug.

A Paradise Lost - Director Laurie Sumyie

A PARADISE LOST is the enchanting, yet harrowing tale of the yellow finch of Palila v. Hawaii, a landmark case where nature took humanity to court to stave off extinction. The film unfolds through the POV of the animated Palila called Anuenue who stood as the client in 1979 court trials. The legal battle leveraged the Endangered Species Act to protect mamane forests where 2,500 Palila competed with introduced sheep & goats. He explains how they won in court, but are still in jeopardy; in 2024, only 300 Palila remain. Today, a Native Hawaiian conservationist struggles to save them amidst escalating threats of climate change, wildfires, introduced predators, diseases, and governmental neglect. Through interviews, archival, vérité, nature footage, and animation created by artist and director, Laurie Sumiye, the film artfully weaves non-human perspectives, science, myth, and indigenous conservation insight collected over the last decade into a spellbinding fable of hope & survival. Directed by Hawaiian nature artist Laurie Sumiye, A PARADISE LOST sweeps audiences to a Pacific island wilderness straight into the struggle of Palila on Hawaii Island, journeying into misty sub-alpine forests. About the filmmaker - Laurie Sumiye is a Japanese-American artist, animator and filmmaker born and raised in Mililani, Hawaiʻi. She was selected as an inaugural Jackson Wild Multicultural Alliance Fellow in 2021, Firelight Documentary Lab Fellow in 2018-20, Sundance Institute/Women in Film Documentary Fellow in 2020, and UnionDocs Collaborative Fellow in 2010. Her short animated documentaries, STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE, about endangered Hawaiian birds, and OF MEMORY & LOS SURES, an oral history of a Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, have won awards and screened at festivals DOCNYC, BAMcinemaFest, and DOCUTAH. The film was part of an acclaimed transmedia documentary produced by UnionDocs, LIVING LOS SURES, which premiered at NYFF and exhibited at PS1MoMA. She started her career in documentary media creating artwork for PROJECT KASHMIR by Geeta V. Patel & Senain Kheshigi and MY BROOKLYN by Kelly Anderson. A PARADISE LOST is her first feature, which received funding and support from Pacific Islanders in Communications, Firelight Media, Doc Society and Blue Mountain Center, receiving their 2021 Harriet Barlow Commons Award. Laurie has an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from CUNY Hunter College and a BA in Art and BS in Communications from Bradley University, and studied art at Istituto Lorenzo de Medici in Italy. She has exhibited her artwork internationally in galleries, art fairs and museums, and been commissioned for business, nonprofit and private collections. Laurie was selected as an Artist-in-Residence at Digital Artist Studios (N. Ireland), Sacatar Institute (Brazil), Artfunkl (UK), A Studio in the Woods (New Orleans) and Bishop Museum (Hawaii). She taught filmmaking as Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi-West Oʻahu. Laurie was awarded a Sony Camera Grant and Honorable Mention at IF/Then Shorts x The Redford Center Nature Access Pitch at DOCNYC for animated short doc, MAKANA.

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Cinemafile showcases the very best in independent, documentary and foreign films through our conversations with the more than 2,000 filmmakers who made them. Through Cinemafile we will do our best to bring the most interesting and accomplished filmmakers from around the world to your attention.

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Mike Kaspar
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2025 - 2026
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242
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© Copyright 2026 Mike Kaspar
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