The Close-up

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 and Executive Producer 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 girlfrien