“Tessa Thompson is everywhere,” Janicza Bravo says when the pair sit down for a rare Zoom call in January. Their friendship typically takes place in person; Thompson can be spotted waiting for Bravo—who is known for running late—at restaurants around Los Angeles, where they both live.

The director’s not wrong. Though Thompson has been in Hollywood for over two decades, this is shaping up to be her busiest season yet. She made her rounds on the award circuit for Hedda, Nia DaCosta’s reinvention of Henrik Ibsen’s 19th-century play about an aristocratic woman defying every norm imposed on her. (Her role as the titular Hedda Gabler has won her a Critic’s Choice award and a Golden Globe nom.) His & Hers, the mystery thriller limited series she leads with Jon Bernthal, hit 19.9 million views on Netflix within days of dropping in January. She’s brought her new production company, Viva Maude, roaring to life with both of those projects.

Next, she’ll be making her Broadway debut opposite Adrien Brody in The Fear of 13. The production, which begins previews this March, tells the story of a man who spent more than two decades on death row before being exonerated with new DNA evidence. “I’m really in these streets and for the streets,” Thompson tells Bravo, when reminded of the deluge of projects set before her in 2026.

Bravo—who has ventured further into television since her 2020 film Zola with directing credits on episodes of The Bear, Poker Face, and Too Much—witnessed Thompson’s work ethic, and some of her newfound executive skills, firsthand when the two teamed up to produce Is God Is, this May’s debut from playwright Aleshea Harris, about a pair of twin sisters out for revenge against their father.

“The image for me is you’re in the garden,” says Bravo, noting the years Thompson, now 42, spent sowing the seeds that brought her to this moment. “You’re doing somewhat of a harvest right now, actually.” Here, the pair revel in the abundance.

Janicza Bravo: I’m going to jump in. Where are you?

Tessa Thompson: New York, my favorite city in the world. And I say that with some measure of embarrassment—

Bravo: Worth noting that you do live in Los Angeles.

Thompson: At the risk of sounding like Mary Tyler Moore, I feel really alive in this city. And at the risk of sounding saccharine, I feel most like myself. The things that I love to do, I do more here. Even last night, I flew in, and I was so tired. I’d been with you the night before, and then I went home and had to pack.

Bravo: For the reader, you actually pack your own bags. Guys, the stars are just like us.

Thompson: And I’m a terrible packer, so I really shouldn’t be in charge of packing.

Bravo: You’re an over-packer.

Thompson: Hugely. Don’t know an edit.

Bravo: Can’t handle an edit.

Thompson: So I was busy overpacking; I didn’t sleep. I arrived here so tired, but tempted to leave the hotel. To do what, I don’t know. I took a bath, I started Heated Rivalry because that’s what you do in these times. But I think what I like about being here is I feel, even if I’m not participating, that all the things that might bring me joy or excitement or curiosity are possible.

Bravo: Since we are talking about New York, you’re going to—drumroll—debut on Broadway in just a few months.

Thompson: That’s also maybe what I feel—a sense of this impending excitement. I’ll be here doing a thing that I have long dreamt of one day getting to do. It’s been a circuitous route to get there. And here I am. And Coltrane is here.

Bravo: Coltrane the dog, not the musician. Just in case someone’s like, Is that his ghost she’s with? What was the last play you did?

Thompson: The last play I did was called Smart People by Lydia Diamond. And we did it here with Mahershala Ali.

Bravo: Humblebrag. That was when?

Thompson: You know what, Janicza, I don’t know. What is your relationship with time? I think I know because I’m waiting for you sometimes for like 45 minutes when we have dinner, and I’m like, Wow, she never met time.

Bravo: Time feels like a Western construct, and while I do inhabit the Western world in my day-to-day and in my business practice, I think that I actually am from another plane. My relationship to time is that I am there when it is the right time for us—

Thompson: For you! I’ve known that about you for a long time. This is what it is to know and to love you. “It hasn’t reached my desk,” as Ayo [Edebiri] said on the Golden Globes red carpet. So many things never reach my desk. Everyone’s posting photographs from 2016, for example.

Bravo: Why is this happening?

Thompson: I don’t know, it hasn’t reached my desk yet!

Bravo: Sometimes I like not knowing. Is it a year of the horse? Was it a horse before? Are we horse again? It made me realize my relationship with time.

Thompson: When you asked me how long ago that play was, I thought it was at most seven years. Then I spoke to Mahershala Ali— humblebrag, name drop—and he was like, “Ten years ago we did this play.”

Bravo: So either seven or 10 years ago, according to Mahershala—and I hope his name appears three times in this article—this play happened. What does it mean to be returning to Broadway? I imagine Ms. Tessa Thompson is booked and busy. Many things do come across your desk.

Thompson: Maybe it had to do with having done Hedda, which is an adaptation of a play. Making that piece felt like making a play, even though we were making this cinematic work. This real hunger emerged, though I’ve always been drawn to the stage. It was the first thing I imagined I would do—TV and film felt like, not even an afterthought.

Even though I was born and raised in Los Angeles, I did not understand how people came to be in movies because no one in my world was in movies. When I would come to New York and visit my dad and my family here, I would see plays. When my father [a musician and singer-songwriter] would work in the theater, I would be on the stage. It was always something I dreamt about, because I understood how to dream about it, I suppose. Soon, I started to think, Geez, it’s either been seven or 10 years, according to me, and Mahershala.

Bravo: That’s the fourth Mahershala mention. On the sixth time, does he suddenly appear on Zoom?

Thompson: I hope so… I started to think, Goodness, this is a muscle that might atrophy, and it’s the thing I want most deeply. This is a newer piece of work, and I’ve done so much classical work. I’ve done so many adaptations of things, and I’m really interested in new work too, cultivating a relationship with this generation’s writers who are making work that hopefully we’ll look back on. It’s also based on a real-life story. I think a lot about the utility of story—why do we tell the stories that we tell? This particular story takes place inside the carceral system, and I know that’s something that we need to talk about more in America.

Bravo: One of the things I wanted to ask was essentially how you go about picking the work that you want to sink your teeth into. Also, from a producing standpoint, I want to make sure that we’re bringing up Viva Maude and what you’re building there.

Thompson: Viva Maude is something so integral to the way I want to work. When you’re making films at any level, but particularly at the indie level, there’s so much work to get it there. I wanted to feel like I was a part of that work that. You and I have done that in the form of Is God Is.

[Viva Maude] gets its name from a character in a film that I really love called Harold and Maude. I love that character so much, because it feels like she kind of created a trope—the manic pixie dream girl—but also upended it by being 80 and suicidal. Which is why I fucking love your work, Janicza, and was such a fan and admirer of yours before I became a dear friend, because I feel like you offer the kind of protagonists that feel both of their time and ahead of their time. They feel impossible to define, they feel singular, and they feel like they usher the audience into a new space and a new way of seeing. Viva Maude came as an experiment in creating architecture and infrastructure around doing that in real time.

Bravo: This isn’t a company started by an actor basically to launch more of their own work that they’re in.

Thompson: No. In some ways, I felt this anxiety around the first two projects, Hedda and His & Hers, coming out with me in the center. That felt like a real misdirect in terms of what the company wants to do and how it wants to establish itself. Never mind that. As an actor, personally, the thing that has always guided me is, Is there a spark? I still really am dying to be in one of your frames. I wanna say that here in the hopes it’ll be in print.

Bravo: Do you find yourself thinking about the audience and the reception?

Thompson: I would be lying to say I don’t, particularly with starting the company. I can never trust that the director I’m producing for is gonna know. I need to know, so I know how to protect them. I’ve read like the top line of stuff, for example, with His & Hers.

Bravo: Are people sending you things, too?

Thompson: Yeah, of course.

Bravo: Why are we sending people anything? Have I told you that twice I’ve accidentally sent the wrong link? And it was a link that was, like, emotionally damaging. An it’s-time-to-walk-into-traffic kind of link.

Thompson: I sort of do that to myself, though, because I am famously like, Stay off the Internet, stay off the Internet, stay off the Internet. But then I’m like, Don’t click on that. Oh God, I just clicked on that. The fortress around you is interested in sending you the good shit. And I go, Well, what about the bad, because it must exist? In creation now, I do think not about reception, but I think about the audience in ways that I didn’t before.

Bravo: Is this with age, or is this with producing?

Thompson: Maybe it’s a function of both. Maybe it’s also a function of the times in which we live. I used to have a bottomless appetite for things being dark or cynical. Maybe I will grow to appreciate that again in the things I watch and create. But I’ve always been interested in things that are audacious in some way, and to me, what’s most audacious in the times we live in now is to make something that is optimistic.

Bravo: You’re looking to evoke more pleasure.

Thompson: I think so. I certainly felt that with His & Hers or Hedda. They are characters that might be unsavory, but ultimately, there’s something in it…

Bravo: Both with great clothes, though. The most important thing about both those characters—the clothing is really fantastic.

Thompson: Which is its own kind of optimism. Times are tough, but you can look fab.

Bravo: Times are tough, but tailoring is key. I remember when we were at the beginning of the pandemic. There was this question of, what is the value? Somewhere inside the muck, there became some clarity around all these people at home watching. People need some form of escapism.

Here we are six years later in this moment where things feel murkier than they’ve felt maybe in quite some time, and there’s a larger disparity between people and where they’re coming from and what they desire. The work feels, again, invaluable. You have a film that we are orbiting around in this conversation called Hedda. You’ve got His & Hers that just came out. And now you’re about to do Broadway. There isn’t a place that I can look where you’re not gonna be. How do you take care of yourself amid all of this making?

Thompson: It’s coming off a period where I’ve been the least visible I’ve been in a really, really, really long time. It was a period of deciding intentionally not to be in spaces, not to be hyper-visible, because I didn’t have something to promote.

Bravo: Not to be in these streets.

Thompson: It’s interesting returning to the streets. Then also the hyper-visibility that comes from being on a platform like Netflix, which is very different than the spaces I’ve been on before. I feel like I’m reengaging with my relationship to it. Just being on a carpet and feeling like you’re ready for consumption, I suppose, that I belong to an audience in a different kind of way. I think I have a better approach to being in these streets than I used to, having some break from it.

Sometimes I have these sorts of out-of-body experiences, where I feel like I’m hovering slightly above or below myself, but I’m not in my skin. What I’ve experienced recently is feeling really in the room. Maybe it’s also a function of age, and also the culmination of so much thought and labor. Particularly with building this company, it’s felt for a long time now like things are kind of hypothetical. So now, to be able to bask in and live in the reality of it, good, bad, whatever, and for the reality to feel, by and large, pretty good, that people are watching, people are engaging, that does feel like the restoration.

Bravo: I want to close with something that you started this conversation with, which was that you’re in New York and you feel most like yourself. And as someone talking to you from LA, I’ll try not to take it personally. Could you, in a handful of words, define what you are, especially right now?

Thompson: In this current moment, I am ever reaching towards that which does not yet exist, you know? Continuously trying to wrestle myself into a kind of divine discontent, which is not to say that I don’t appreciate all of the fantastic things. But I’m striving in this world, in this little time, relatively speaking, that we all have, to try to make the spaces that we exist in more beautiful than they were when we arrived in them. Whatever that looks like, whatever that means.

Pre-order your copy of the Entertainers issue, with Tessa Thompson on the cover, here.

Creative Direction by Studio&
Makeup by Alex Babsky
Hair by Lacy Redway
Nails by Stephanie Stone
Casting by Tom Macklin
Set Design by Romain Goudinoux
Project Management by Chloe Kerins
Creative Production by Katie Binfield
Fashion Assistance by Cydney Moore and Chiara Giangola
Lighting Assistance by Phil Sanchez
Second Lighting Assistance by Talisa Choi

Whether she is staging a flip-flop opera or turning a heliport into the setting for a museum gala, Meriem Bennani relies on the power of fantasy to transport her audiences into mind-bending realms where both timely and timeless questions surface. This ethos earned the Moroccan-born, New York–based artist the inaugural Boss Award for Outstanding Achievement at Art Basel Miami Beach last December, honoring work with cultural resonance that extends beyond the market.

Over the past decade, Bennani has made her mark with a multimedia practice that skewers and softens contemporary life in equal measure, from her 2018–22 “Life on the CAPS” film series, a dystopian meditation on diaspora, to her kinetic exploration of public sculpture on the High Line with Windy, 2022.

Here, Bennani reflects on artistic responsibility and how she plans to allocate the $50,000 grant that is part of the award with Boss Creative Director Marco Falcioni. 

Marco Falcioni: What is this award’s significance to you? 

Meriem Bennani: I’ve been working for a while and have received a lot of support from fashion, which I really value, especially since my work isn’t very commercial. I tend to make a few large installations and films each year, and my real hope is simply to keep doing that. Support like this gives me time to go deep. That kind of space is rare in a market that pushes artists to constantly stay visible. 

Falcioni: Which cause do you wish to personally support with the award?

Bennani: I’m planning to support an organization founded by Palestinian artists, Bilna’es. They directly fund artists and cultural projects in Gaza and the West Bank, particularly where resources are scarce. The focus is on getting money straight to artists. 

Falcioni: What advice would you give to emerging creatives looking to make their own path in this industry? 

Bennani: Resist the pressure to constantly produce. Saying yes at first is exciting, but slowing down—giving yourself years instead of months to make work—can be a real luxury, and a powerful one. 

Falcioni: Finally, Meriem, I wanted to ask you—what makes someone a real boss? 

Bennani: I’m too many things to be a boss. 

Falcioni: To me, being a boss is about standing by your own decisions. And for us, that’s exactly what you represent. I’ve always tried to break apart the social constraints of suiting and instead offer a sense of empowerment. When you wear a well-cut suit, you feel good—you feel stronger. 

Bennani: I’ll admit it—I have way too many suits.

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Every industry needs its chaos agent, and thank God the art world has Pat Oleszko. The 78-year-old artist, who has lived in a Tribeca loft stuffed to the brim with her creations since the ’70s, reflects the issues of our time back at us with wit and gravitas through performances that pull from burlesque, commedia dell’arte, and protest movements. Her rich archive of inflatables and costumes is the subject of her first New York solo show in 35 years at SculptureCenter, on view through April.

You have a lot going on these days, Pat. What are you sitting with? What’s on your mind?

It’s so very thrilling to have this [SculptureCenter] show. Then the [Whitney] Biennial… stuff’s out, people see it. But all I really want to do is make work about our descent into fascism and the massive climate problem. I really thought that I was going to be able to make some new work for the SculptureCenter show, but I simply didn’t have enough time. The only way that I can deal with iniquity and the awfulness of the situation is to create work. It’s very frustrating that I’m not able to channel my great sadness and fury into something that’s palpable. I hope once the show is up I’ll have time to start making stuff [again]. 

You’re not making new work right now, but I can imagine the past few months have had you looking at a lot of your old work—with SculptureCenter, the Whitney Biennial, and your presentation at Art Basel Miami Beach last December. Have you re-encountered any of them in ways that challenge or complicate how you first saw them?

There’s so much work, and in all of that there is the fact that I am the vessel, the armature, the motivation of the stuff… I put myself in so many different situations, and a lot of them were quite brutal.

I’m looking [back] and I’m sort of in awe that I did those things—placing myself in the middle of society where [I] might be welcomed, laughed at, or challenged by any number of people that were viewing it. I don’t have any fear about putting myself out as a fool, but it’s different as a person with experience. I know how to handle the crowd; I know essentially what’s going to happen in a lot of circumstances. But I’m still fearful of what might happen to me in different situations, whether it’s on the stage or in the street. I know much more, but it’s still terrifying. It’s always hard and it’s always easy because that’s what I have to do.

I wanted to ask you about how your experience of vulnerability and labor have evolved over the years. As you said, you’re the instigator for the work. It doesn’t exist without you activating it—whether that’s pressing a button and inflating it or wearing and literally embodying it. 

I have journals, and I have kept a record of all my exercise, what time I get up, and how much I weigh for years. The energy has changed, so I’m more watchful of how much energy I can spend in pursuit of this stuff. I still don’t recognize the fact that I’m 78 years old. Inside, I’m just the same. I’m a Taurus, so I’ve had a massive amount of strength to pummel myself to do these things.

The other thing is I’m doing exactly what I want to do. My whole life I’ve been living the exploration of this gift that I discovered. I’m never happier than when I’m working, and the thrill of putting the piece out in public is better than any drug I’ve ever had. If I fail, oh my God. 

Failure can be so fruitful, though.

Absolutely. There’s nothing, nothing like failure to propel you. I give my whole self to a project, so if I fail, it’s going to be a magnificent failure. You never make that mistake again. It forces you to grow.

When did you know that this was what you wanted to do—that this was a gift you wanted to claim?

I knew I was going to be an artist in kindergarten because we had to do a self-portrait, and mine was so clearly the best in the class. I always had millions of projects. When I got to college—and going to the University of Michigan at that time, I believe, was like going to the Bauhaus or Black Mountain—there was just a pervasive brilliance with the students and teachers. I had two teachers, Milton Cohen and George Manupelli, and one of them said a few things to the class that made me realize that what I was thinking about could be expressed on my body. I couldn’t learn how to weld—my things kept falling down—so I was working at home and sewing. Then I realized I was six feet tall, so I could hang the work on myself. That was my eureka moment: engaging with the public, with ideas, and putting them out, not in a hallowed white cube.

Who do you think have been the most important conversation or thought partners over the course of your career?

There have been many… Rose La Rose, who was the mentor who ran the strip house in Toledo. Burlesque was a huge influence on my career, and she was the smartest woman I’d ever met. She was an enormous influence—as important as going to art school. I certainly spent a good part of my life in the movies, and Buster Keaton was an example of an undaunting humor and being resolute in the face of adversity, which kind of characterizes what the fool is about. I don’t know how many film festivals I’ve sat through happily in the dark watching him and wishing I could be him.

The use of language has been very important, and a lot of that came from my dad, who spoke many languages and always inserted them in conversation, completely flummoxing us children. I always loved language. The use of language is no different than the use of the body. I can manipulate the body into anything, but still underneath it’s a body that has to walk down the street, take the subway, ride the bike to do the gig… I like writing about the work almost as much as I like making it. And oftentimes an idea will appear in language, like, “Bingo, I have to go do that.” Then I have the greatest time in the world, even though I may not know what the fuck I’m doing with the piece. I’m getting to know it as I’m making it; we all grow together. Then I put it on, and there has to be some language to speak about it. And that language is usually unique to that character. 

Have you given up anything to be and to stay an artist?

I haven’t given up on anything. I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s the best expression of my talents. Everything that I’ve ever done that has been more pedestrian, I have manipulated into my work. When I was a waitress, every night, it was a different kind of waitress. When I was stripping, I wasn’t stripping like they were…  

I mean, I wish I had some more money, but I’m not interested in that. I’m only interested in making a kind of a world that is taking on these different challenges and dealing with that in my own way, so that I can point out absurdity or the tragedy of the moment. 

How has your idea of what art can and can’t do evolved?

You try your best, and you do it with as much rigor and thoughtfulness and invention to try to direct attention to something, to speak to people, to motivate them, to make them recognize stuff that they might be hiding from or that might be hidden from them. I don’t have any false expectations about what art can do, but I do believe that art is memorable in a way that reaches many more senses than didactic stuff from governments or organizations, particularly in my field, which is working through humor. You make people laugh, and one, you give them enjoyment. Two, then they have to think about what they were laughing at and why. 

I’m not putting myself in the same echelon, but the great humorists have always had a problem being taken seriously. Even though Chaplin and Keaton and Jacques Tati were doing incredible work, it took the world a long time to recognize the fact that it was true brilliance. If you’re good you get a lot of mileage. I have something that will keep me occupied into eternity. I’m happy I went to college and got an education about how to be an artist at all times. Money well spent. 

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You’ve heard of Pillion, the “dom-com” biker romance from debut director Harry Lighton, by now. A24 is suggestively asking moviegoers if they’re “ready for a joyride?” Harry Melling, clearly a long way from his Dudley roots, is giving interviewers boot-licking advice. Alexander Skarsgård is showing up for screenings in dildo- and bong-covered button downs (courtesy the Italian brand Magliano) and thigh-high Saint Laurent boots—though that one’s not too far from the usual. 

Lighton’s adaptation of Adam Mars-Jones’s 2020 novel Box Hill, in theaters Feb. 6 Stateside, has his leading men engaged in a strict, 24/7 arrangement. The pair first meet when Colin (Melling) is singing in a barbershop quartet at a bar. Smoldering biker Ray (Skarsgård) sidles up alongside him to arrange a meetup. Their dynamic is established posthaste when Ray arrives in full biker regalia, a Rottweiler in tow, and Colin scurries over in his dad’s leather jacket toting the family dachshund—only to be promptly pushed down to meet the former’s Prince Albert piercing. 

Come ass-less wrestling singlets or tense family dinners, Lighton manages a simmering, self-actualizing love affair many a film has failed to produce in the last year. And he did it on his first go. Granted, there were thoughts of placing the story on a cruise ship or in ancient Rome, before the director circled back to Box Hill’s original subculture setting in England.

Here, Lighton lets us in on how he whipped all those disparate ideas into a tight 107 minutes. 

I’ve been dying to ask about how you were first envisioning putting this film on a cruise ship, or in ancient Rome.

Ancient Rome is maybe easier to comprehend because it’s sort of a mainstay of cheap porn. There’s such hierarchies on a cruise ship and such a division of below and above deck. I’ve since discovered that it’s incredibly difficult and expensive to get permission to shoot on one, but I liked the idea of just rigging up a lot of cameras and having the actors mill in and out of the regular cruise-goers. I’m talking about an all inclusive, massive cruise. There’s so much uniformity in that world in terms of everyone doing aerobics at the same time and drinking the same drinks. I liked the idea of this incredibly unusual relationship taking place in such a uniform environment. I think [the relationship] was initially between a security guard and a passenger. 

You also talked to a number of people who are involved in the kink scene to learn more. Did you find people locally? Was it people that you knew?

It was a bit of both; some people I knew and then some people myself and the production company reached out to. I’d go around to their house and have a coffee and chat. Then, into the casting of it, we recruited a lot of people from either the kink world or the biker world. They became our next resource. They would [give] input into details in the sex scenes or the bike scenes. I went and met up with the guy who wears the pup mask in the film, Paul, and we were just meeting up to have a drink and talk about his experience as a biker and a kinkster and then off the back of that I was like, “Well, maybe it’d be a good idea to have a pup in the film.” He sent me this great email which was like 2000 words about ways a pup might be incorporated into some of the scenes. 

A lot of people who will see the film probably don’t know that much about these communities. Did you think about hitting that balance between showing everything, but also recognizing a general audience might find some of these scenes more scandalous than those steeped in them all the time?

I never wanted to water down the kink scenes for the sake of a mainstream audience, but I guess there were some things. If I considered scat, for instance, I was like, Well that might push away too much of an audience. But for the most part I want those scenes to really feel honest to the specific audience being represented. Often a life within a subculture does sit alongside a more typical life with parents and roast dinners, [and I wanted] to find a tone where you were hugging an audience at the same time as presenting information which might alienate them.

We grew up watching Harry Melling as a kid in Harry Potter. Did you think about what he was bringing to the film, given people’s background with him as an actor?

Certainly not in terms of Harry Potter. I had seen him play secondary supporting roles in a bunch of films, like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, The Devil All the Time, and The Pale Blue Eye. They’re very different performances, but there was a singular kind of magnetism, which didn’t feel typically alpha male, leading man. It felt magnetically beta and that’s what I thought I needed for Colin. He’s someone who has existed on the periphery of the in-group probably all of his life and has, other than barbershop [quartet], not really succeeded in any area of his life, but is still stubbornly willing to succeed. That’s what Harry captures really well. There’s a lot of small triumphs for Colin, which he perceives to be triumphs where other people would perceive them to be violations or defeats.

The first alley scene might be a good example of that. He has a fairly extreme first encounter with Ray, yet at the end of it he’s grinning and skipping along after Ray to be like, “When can we do this again?” A lot of the comedy in the film comes from that but also a lot of the heart. This is someone who’s courageous enough to jump off a cliff in search of… they’re not totally sure what, but they know they want something more than what they have. That was a very inspiring sentiment to me. 

What about Alexander? He’s almost carving out a niche for himself as this guy who’s just down for the craziest movie that you can bring him. If it’s slightly sexually perverted, he’s in. Had you seen Infinity Pool?

I’d seen Infinity Pool, and I’d seen evidence that maybe he was kind of mischievous and quite fearless. But the thing which really brought me to him was Succession. It was seeing him play Lukas Matsson, someone who obviously is categorically a hottie but also is psychologically very capable of manipulating situations. He dommed all the Roy children in the scenes they were in together and did it in a way which was fun to watch and made you smile. I was like, I need lots of that in Ray so that the audience doesn’t feel like they’re sitting in some categorically abusive romance.

This being your feature debut, and having these two actors who have been in so many projects, was that reassuring or was it a little intimidating, that maybe they’ve done it more times than you?

It was both. As soon as they signed on, I had 10 minutes of celebrating and then a couple of days of being like, Fuck, I’ve gotta work out how to direct these guys. But they made it very easy for me. The intimidation factor wore off very quickly.

Is that the power dynamic on set, that you have to dom your actors?

God, I’d call myself, certainly not a dom on set. Maybe like a combination of a brat and a sub.

I read that Roma was an influence on the visual style of the film. 

It’s probably less evident than it was in the shooting, but me and the DP were talking about references and there was a thing I found when I watched Roma. It’s following this character who’s in service to a family and she’s often passive within a scene, serving someone and then waiting. The camera language unfolds in very measured, objective pans where the camera is moving independently of the actors, sometimes they’re coming in and out of frame—it creates this propulsion to the scene where you’re waiting for the drama to unfold. I thought that was a great way of creating a thrust with a character who doesn’t provide that thrust themselves. One of the surviving [shots] is the opening of the orgy scene when we pan round with the bike and then land on the poker table. 

What strikes me about Roma is it’s known for its black-and-white, sweeping visuals. Did you pull anything from the look of it?

Our references for the colors were British photographers really, like a guy called Nick Waplington. Another film was Beanpole by Kantamir Bagilov. I loved the colors in that film and particularly the way he really limited the palette to rust red and moldy green. I wanted the Smith family to have that same feel of a Christmas past its sell-by date.

And with Elliott Erwitt’s New York City, 1974 (dog legs), how did you first come across that reference?

It was the thumbnail of an obituary. I was well into the writing of Pillion at that stage. I saw the photo and it spoke to me. I’d been thinking about symbols in the film and the motorbike is such a loud symbol that I was wary of having lots of others which spoke to the stark division in power and physical stature between Ray and Colin. But then I saw that photo and it made me smile. I always wanted to have the audience smiling as much as they might be gasping or clutching their pearls. I thought, It would be fun if actually Ray and Colin had dogs which reflected their status. I added Rosie the Rottweiler and Hippo the dachshund into the film. I know the photos of a chihuahua, but my family had a sausage dog called Hippo. The fact that the Great Dane and the human are above the frame in terms of their eye level and then the chihuahuas kind of at the level of the camera, that [also] really speaks to Colin’s perspective in the film. He’s often, metaphorically, looking up at Ray.

There was a review of the film where they call Alexander Skarsgård a gentle giraffe, or perhaps a well-dressed giraffe.

I haven’t been sent that one, but, God, is that a compliment, a well-dressed giraffe? It makes him sound a bit lanky and I guess clumsy, whereas Ray he’s a bit more of a… I don’t know what’s a different animal? You tell me.

A Rottweiler. 

Exactly.

Are you thinking about next projects already?

I really am. I’ve carved out some time to really knuckle down. I’ve been throwing ideas around but haven’t landed on one yet, so that’s my main aim in the first six months [of 2026] is to get on with new scripts.

I like that your Instagram bio is still “Sometimes Filmmaker.” I feel like once you’ve shown at Cannes, can you say that you’re just a filmmaker?

It’s interesting you said that cause it now sounds a bit like a humblebrag. It sounds like that annoying British understatement. But it’s worse if it says, like, “Butcher, Baker, Filmmaker.”

Award-winning filmmaker.

Fuck that, God.

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“One of the very first goals I had in mind was that nobody leave the building happy.”

Udo Kittelmann is not organizing a funeral or directing an adaptation of King Lear. The German curator is describing his experience “editing an audiovisual poem” from a sampling of early film entries (think Alice Guy-Blaché, Georges Méliès, Walt Disney) and a cross-section of contemporary video works from the repositories of Julia Stoschek, the leading collector of time-based art.

When on our Zoom in January, I repeatedly make the mistake of calling the resulting “What a Wonderful World” an exhibition, Stoschek and Kittelmann alternately and diligently correct me. Calling their project, on view at Los Angeles’s Variety Arts Theater Feb. 6 through March 20, a poem is the pair’s way of signaling their will to question how we have come to ingest art, moving images, and where they intersect. They hope the dose of re-enchantment this nomenclature convention surfaces will reach the audiences that walk through the five-story parcours, too.

Although featured works from the likes of Lu Yang, Bunny Rogers, and Paul Chan feel particularly indissociable from the technological advances of our era, Kittelmann insists on their shared lineage with Disney’s earliest animations or Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou; life, loss, love, and the persistent need to make meaning of it all, are evoked over and over again. In a peak screen-time time, Kittelmann asks viewers to reach beyond their desire for entertainment to access a more raw experience of these capsules of humanity. Here, he and Stoschek chart what the process of assembling “What a Wonderful World,” the Julia Stoschek Foundation’s first major appearance Stateside, has shown them.

CULTURED: We’re going to be talking a lot about moving images, so I wanted to ask, what was the last moving image that moved each of you?

Julia Stoschek: The image that’s stayed with me most recently is Dara Birnbaum’s work, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978–79, which is part of “What a Wonderful World.” It’s my screensaver. We are living in such a challenging world, and the only way we can survive is if we transform all the time. I love the idea of becoming Wonder Woman. [Laughs]

Udo Kittelmann: Just yesterday, my oldest son’s child turned a year old. His mother took, by coincidence, [a video] of him walking on his own for the very first time. To see how proud he got, like, Wow, something is now totally different with my body. You could see him smiling. Then, of course, he fell again on the floor. It was quite touching; it’s a real artwork in a way.

CULTURED: Udo, you’ve been formally associated with the Julia Stoschek Foundation since 2021, when you joined the advisory board. Where did the conversation for “What a Wonderful World” begin?

Stoschek: I’ve known Udo for nearly 20 years. I knew how he curated. My connection to Los Angeles started when I became a member, from 2018 to 2022, of MOCA’s Board of Trustees. The idea was born to show part of the collection in LA, and we started talking about this three or four years ago. Udo, you came up with the idea to connect contemporary video works from my collection with silent movies and early cinema classics.

Kittelmann: For many years, I was working on the idea to put into dialogue not just contemporary time-based art but silent movies and so on—to bring up the idea that the topics have never changed. It’s always about how people behave with each other, how they fall in love, how they fight with each other—whether in a more private relationship or between nations. The first visionary moving images were already filmed by the beginning of the 20th century. What has changed? Only the aesthetics, and the different generations’ experiences of being in love or fighting.

“A project like this, we will do once in a lifetime.” — Julia Stoschek

CULTURED: Julia, were you familiar with silent film and early cinema before this? Did any make a particular impact on you?

Stoschek: No, not before. But let’s talk about The Skeleton Dance from 1929, one of the earliest animations. You see these skeletons emerge from their graves and start dancing. On the one hand, it seems a bit funny and ironic, but on the other, it’s also brutal and a bit shocking. We placed it at the entrance area, so it’s a welcome, but it’s also a gentle reminder of mortality.

Kittelmann: I very much want to avoid that people—after they take this journey through the building and see these many, many, many thousands of images—leave in the mood to join a party. I’d want them to go home and find a comfortable place to reflect on what all these works were about.

CULTURED: The moving image recently has become almost purely about entertainment or distraction, so that’s an interesting intention.

Kittelmann: Not to entertain, but to come up with something that’s quite provoking about where we are…

Stoschek: …today. This show is holding up a mirror to the state of the world.

Kittelmann: It’s obvious that the title quotes Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” It was first released in 1967, a time when the whole world was quite chaotic. Demonstrations were all over the planet, especially around the Vietnam War. It was a tough, if not brutal, time. And Armstrong decided to come up with this song to give you the message, “Don’t give up dreaming.” This was the thread that led me through the whole collection to find these works. Julia’s collection is very much about these essential video-based artworks. There’s a tiny minority of them that entertain you.

Stoschek: It’s not a massage. [Laughs] 

Kittelmann: But we were quite careful not to make it all in all too sad, too frustrating. There is hope, yeah?

CULTURED: Julia, this is the first time the Foundation is having a major showing in the U.S., in the capital of entertainment—Los Angeles. How did you take into account the American audience in organizing this?

Stoschek: I definitely wanted to have it in LA, not in New York, because it’s the birthplace of visual modernity. My collection has this focus on the moving image, starting from the ’60s until today, that speaks directly to this history. I’m sure that the LA visitors grew up with the film industry and with movies. We’ll also have special opening hours from 5 p.m. until midnight. We’re all doing it for the first time; I’m very excited to see how people will react.

Kittelmann: I really believe that the works we selected are quite emotional. I don’t see a big difference in where it will be presented. As long as we all have a heartbeat. People are asked to feel very free in how they walk [through the space]. There is no sign that tells you where to go or what to see. Even with the text in the magazines we’ll give away, we try to avoid interpretation. It’s very much for everybody, not just the art world elite or the discourse-dependent crowd. There is no moral behind it that we want to prove; you may take the moral out of it. [Calling it] an audiovisual poem hopefully already brings you into a different mood.

CULTURED: What has working on “What a Wonderful World” taught you about where audio-visual and time-based art is headed, or what’s missing?

Kittelmann: What we completely left out is something that was built on A.I.

Stoschek: But it’s also not really part of my collection. I never found the right work. Content-wise, there was nothing that really touched me. I’m open to everything, but what I’ve seen until now, I’ve not been too into.

Kittelmann: We really did take this challenge to experiment in times where, in the art world, fewer and fewer exhibitions are experimental. I’m personally very happy that “What a Wonderful World” will be on view at the same time as the “Monuments” show [at MOCA and the Brick]. To have those projects side by side is amazing.

Stoschek: A project like this, we will do once in a lifetime. I hope that as many visitors as possible can see and join the show. It is a pop-up for six weeks with special opening hours, and we have an incredible side program as well. I really hope people enjoy the show.

Kittelmann: We also forgot to say—it’s banal but not banal—is that everybody is asked to take popcorn for free. They can walk around with popcorn. Why not? We are not a museum.

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Julie Delpy isn’t the least bit sentimental. “It’s far in the past,” she says of Before Sunrise, the 1995 film that made her a Gen X staple, with a shrug. “It doesn’t exist in my life anymore.” The 55-year-old actor is voluble, and a little mischievous—not unlike Céline, the sharp-tongued romantic she made famous, or like a person who has been underestimated for decades. On a late morning last fall, she spoke freely about fame, freedom, and the uneasy business of being remembered, but only glancingly and reluctantly about the film trilogy—which marked its 30th anniversary in 2025—that reshaped how the world saw her, even if she never changed that much herself.

A decade before Richard Linklater came calling, Delpy was already steeped in European art-house cinema. After Jean-Luc Godard discovered her as a teen, she starred in Mauvais Sang by Leos Carax, earning a César nomination (France’s equivalent of the Oscars), and in Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy, building a career marked by a restless curiosity for complex cinema. Then came Before Sunrise, a modest American indie that became an unlikely cultural touchstone, and its follow-ups Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013).

Delpy hasn’t watched the movies in years, though her teenage son recently did. His verdict? They’re cute, but Stalker, the 1979 slow-cinema classic by Andrei Tarkovsky, is much better. “I have to say, Stalker is fucking genius,” she concedes with a laugh. Whatever the Before films meant to Delpy and the rest of us then, she, at least, is well beyond them now.

When the first installment of the Richard Linklater trilogy premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1995, its quiet, lived-in mood moved through theaters like a secret. The film features one of cinema’s most enduring meet-cutes: Céline (Delpy) follows Jesse (Ethan Hawke) on a whim, stepping off the train in Vienna. They amble through the city, transforming a cheap date into something life-altering. In an era of romances like Materialists and Palm Springs, where self-awareness and irony buffer emotion, the premise of Before Sunrise—two strangers talking their way through an unbroken day off the grid—feels radical in its simplicity, and achingly difficult to conjure now.

What’s often forgotten, especially today, is how much of the trilogy’s voice—its humor and its female realism—came from Delpy herself. “I picked my name, I picked the book I was reading, and I picked my family,” she says about recalibrating Kim Krizan’s script. In the process, she rendered Céline “an active romantic, not a passive one.” Her writing lent the films the grounding sting of feminine self-awareness that kept them from drifting into fantasy, and kept audiences coming back.

“I’m not the pretty girl anymore—and, personally, I don’t give a shit.” — Julie Delpy

Though Delpy and Hawke were officially credited as co-writers on the sequels, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, she treads carefully when discussing her contributions to the first film, which was the subject of a years-long public dispute. “It was like treason,” she says of the bitter situation. “I went away from the business for a while because of that.”

But Delpy has never been one to lick her wounds for long. She pivoted to directing, making a string of smart, prickly films, like the darkly comic Lolo and the historical thriller The Countess. Most didn’t have international distribution beyond 2 Days in Paris and 2 Days in New York, a pair of neurotic, self-lacerating romantic comedies. “There’s a huge difference between how my work as a director has been received in the U.S., where it barely exists, and in Europe, where some are cult movies,” she notes, half-amused, half-exasperated, and thoroughly over Hollywood’s nonsense.

Delpy, who splits her time between Los Angeles and Paris, insists her choices have nothing to do with ambition—sometimes to her disadvantage. “I’m not driven by ego,” she says. “I go with what feels right for me.” She wrote her latest feature, Meet the Barbarians, because she felt it was an important story to tell, “not because I thought it was a hit.” In it, a small French town prepares to welcome a Ukrainian refugee family—only to be surprised when a Syrian family arrives instead. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2024 to warm reviews and has been a conversation starter in Europe, though, like most of her work, it hasn’t found U.S. distribution. “Apparently, refugees are not very in, especially when they’re Arabs,” she deadpans. (The film will have its New York premiere at the New York Comedy Film Festival on Feb. 19.)

Still, creative freedom matters more to Delpy than reach. “I never want to be anyone’s creation,” she says. People think of her less now than they did in her starlet years, which suits her fine. “I’m not the pretty girl anymore—and, personally, I don’t give a shit,” says Delpy, who makes a point of wearing the same dress to every public event. “With what’s going on in the world, I am uncomfortable showing up with thousands and thousands of dollars on me.”

That fierce sense of autonomy has become her signature. In Hostage, one of Netflix’s most popular miniseries last year, Delpy plays the president of France, navigating a crisis with icy authority and flashes of weary humanity. The show’s success revealed a new facet of Delpy to a wider audience; many who first met her as a romantic lead discovered her as a commanding, middle-aged woman in power. “She’s someone who made every compromise to rise to the top,” Delpy says of her character. “Fortunately—or unfortunately—I’m the opposite. I’ve made very few compromises in my life and career. Maybe I’d be further along if I had.”

Delpy is already turning her attention to the next challenge: Ruben Östlund’s The Entertainment System Is Down, a jet-black ensemble comedy co-starring Keanu Reeves—“that one is pure fun”—and more projects she’s not ready to announce just yet. For now, she prefers to stay in motion. “I’m looking at the future,” she says resolutely. “Nothing else matters.”

Makeup by Kathy Jeung
Hair by Christian Marc
Production by Adam Bodenstein
Production Management by Auriana Ehsani
Photography Assistance by Tristan Hirsch

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It comes as no surprise that semantics have always mattered to Elin Kling and Karl Lindman, who founded the womenswear brand Toteme in New York in 2014, the same year they married. The Swedish couple’s aesthetic, after all, is synonymous with precision and restraint—of palette, silhouette, and materials alike. Their focus lies in the essence of a garment, the building blocks of an archetypal wardrobe. 

Though trending terms such as “quiet luxury” could easily be applied to this calculated yet unostentatious approach to dressing, the duo has shrugged off that label, or any really—until now. “I have always struggled with others talking about Toteme as a minimalistic brand; I didn’t want us to use that word,” Kling, wearing a black knit and bare face, tells me when I meet the couple in Paris in November. “But 10 years later, I think that’s maybe exactly what we are.”

“We don’t scream. It’s not the aesthetic of Toteme.” —Karl Lindman

Kling had this epiphany earlier in the week while visiting the brand’s new Paris flagship (their first outpost in mainland Europe) on the well-heeled Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. As with most of their 26 boutiques or shop-in-shops globally, the 2,390-square-foot, two-story space was designed by Stockholm-based architectural studio Halleroed. Its art-gallery-white walls and Italian limestone floors are punctuated by precisely placed pieces: a Voronoi Carrara marble shelf by Marc Newson here, chalky Liljevalchs sofas there. Twelve large black-and-white archival photographs by longtime Toteme collaborator Mikael Jansson and a stained-glass window by Lucie Gottlieb add a discreetly decorative touch. “We wanted it to feel serene and really remove everything that was unnecessary,” explains Kling. “We don’t scream,” Lindman chimes in. “It’s not the aesthetic of Toteme.”

Kling and Lindman have always been dogged in their vision. “In our first season, we were told by partners buying into Toteme that we needed more prints, more colors,” Kling says, of a time that was dominated by street style and loud, look-at-me fashion. “We almost did it, but we stayed in our space.” “We are these broken records, Elin and I,” Lindman adds with a smile. 

The duo, introduced by mutual friends when they were both expats living in New York, shared a background as visual creatives with media experience. Before launching Toteme in their early 30s, Kling successfully ran Style by Kling, the blog she started in 2007, along with the bimonthly magazine StyleBy. Lindman, a former model, cut his teeth as an art director before joining Interview as the magazine’s design director. 

That shoe-leather work, combined with a clear-sighted vision of what was missing from the market (sharply edited clothing with a sense of purpose and a price point whose accessibility is more than an afterthought), helped them stand out from the crowd from the jump. Early success stories include their boxy scarf jacket, a mainstay that is updated each season. Today, every piece still has to speak to Kling personally. As Toteme has expanded its offerings—very successfully into leather goods (all hail the just-relaxed-enough T-Lock bag) and, most recently, jewelry—she maintains the same philosophy: “It’s all rooted in, Would that inspire me?”

Twelve years in, Lindman says, “the challenge is to stay true to a kind of ‘anti-algorithm’ because everyone is looking at the same things, at the same travel destinations, or if it’s some piece of furniture or trending art.” For that reason, he continues, “I’m very proud of our Paris store—it’s very much trying to resist the idea of, I don’t know, a round bubbly sofa.” (These storefronts are steadily becoming a focus for the brand’s image; they have three more cities in the U.S.—Miami, Chicago, and Dallas—in their sights.)

A trend-proof environment is one thing; women also have to want to wear the clothes and feel enough urgency to actually buy them. And they do: From 2022 to 2024, the brand’s annual turnover increased from €100 million to €180 million. For the Spring/Summer 2026 collection revealed last September in New York, Kling’s vision evolved to reflect the exponential velocity of modern life (the couple is juggling 200 employees globally, not to mention two young children).

The lineup of slip dresses, tanks, and pajamas arrived deliberately (but only slightly) disheveled. Bags hung open, their clasps ignored. “I like the idea of our woman being quite speedy,” says Kling. “The Toteme woman has direction, and she cares, but she also cares about other things in her life.” 

And what of the Toteme man? Are they imagining who he might be? “Could be,” says Lindman, with a slow smile and a shrug. And venturing into furniture? “What can we say, we’ll do it,” he jokes, before adding, “We’ve always been very intrigued by the idea of creating a successful brand, not just a successful collection.”

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We all handle grief in our own ways, but few do so more singularly than Helen Macdonald, a writer and naturalist who found respite after the death of their father by devoting themself to the care and training of a goshawk. 

This week, English director Philippa Lowthorpe is releasing H is for Hawk, an adaptation of Macdonald’s memoir starring Claire Foy as Helen, Brendan Gleeson as Helen’s father Alisdair, and a stable of winged performers in the role of Mabel the hawk, who soars through the woods in some of the most arresting wildlife footage seen outside the BBC. 

When she’s not in the air, Mabel is holed up at her handler’s home, one half of a codependent relationship that seems to alternately serve and hinder both parties’ growth. Lowthorpe—known for her work on the series Five Daughters, The Crown, and Call the Midwife—moves between each pole with practiced ease, interspersed with clips of Gleeson’s many warm moments with his onscreen daughter, highlighting the gaping void of his absence.

Ahead of the film’s release, Lowthorpe sat down with CULTURED for a look behind the scenes at working with a fleet of avian actors and an exploration of the cast and crew’s personal connection to Macdonald’s story. 

CULTURED: How did you come to this project?

Philippa Lowthorpe: I did a show for the BBC called Three Girls, which was a really tough subject about the grooming gangs in Rochdale in the north of England, and it caused quite a big stir in this country. Dede Gardner [and Lena Headey, the producers] got to watch it, so then they invited me to pitch for directing [H is for Hawk]. My dad hadn’t long died before I had this phone call from them, and so when I read [screenwriter Emma Donoghue’s] first draft of the script and the book, I found it so overwhelmingly moving. It really spoke to me in such a deep way about not only grief, but about a very good father and daughter relationship. 

We don’t see many father and daughter relationships that are good. We see dysfunctional ones, don’t we? But a proper adult relationship between a grown-up daughter and their father that is very positive and affirming and loving and funny, we just don’t see that. I’m one of three girls and we had a dad who was also a bit of a character, like Helen’s dad. It just seemed such an extraordinary story. But there’s also the challenge of filming a hawk and bringing that into this film, so it’s not just a character study. It’s got this other incredible dimension of a woman’s obsession. And the other thing is, we don’t often see very clever women in film, do we?

CULTURED: Did you get the chance to talk to Helen about the book? 

Lowthorpe: Helen, right from the beginning, was so collaborative, so helpful, reading drafts of the script, giving advice about falconry, giving us the idea of contacting Lloyd and Rose Buck, who became our hawk experts. Claire had to learn falconry, and Helen was involved in every detail. Because it was a very low budget film, we had to find lots of different ways of set decorating. Sarah Finley, our brilliant designer, asked for Helen’s email to check on things, like, what did her house look like? Helen said, “I’m gonna lend you all my treasures.” So we had Helen’s pictures, feathers, little skulls. Helen and their family came to the filming, and Helen’s mom sat on the sofa in our set and said, “This feels like home.”

CULTURED: How did Claire and Brendan join the project?

Lowthorpe: I’d worked with Claire, because I directed some of The Crown. She is so charismatic and so watchable. Claire read the script and said yes straight away. And then Brendan, we needed somebody very charismatic to play her father and somebody who can really hold the screen. He agreed to read the script and then I was sitting in this very seat, February last year. I felt like he was interviewing me rather than the other way around. He was asking lots of questions about how I like filming and what the meaning of the story was to me. I told him about my dad. And because he’s also a dad, even though he hasn’t got daughters, he was very, very interested in that idea of being a good man.

I know because I have a son as well, there’s a lot of negativity about men around. It’s quite nice to be able to show something that’s positive. Even though he was quite dysfunctional, her dad in lots of ways had lots of funny, crazy obsessions and he understood his daughter in such a profound way. Brendan really loved that idea. He actually was talking to me about bringing up his sons and saying that had been really concerning to him, so much negativity towards them. I ended up crying at something he said because it was so moving, and he said, “I’ll do it for you, Philippa. Count me in.” I’m sure it’s because I wept.

CULTURED: Oh, dear. 

Lowthorpe: Brendan’s very funny and very naughty. When we were doing one of the scenes [where] he’s sawing the branches of the tree. He’s doing some trimming in the garden and he got so carried away. The people whose garden it was said that we could just take a little bit off. He was so enjoying himself, he sawed half the tree off. But then he looks directly into the camera as if to say, “I’m being naughty.”

CULTURED: I was dying to ask you about having a hawk as one of your lead actors. How did you pull that off?

Lowthorpe: We were very, very lucky that we had fantastic bird experts who live near me in Bristol where a lot of natural history filming gets made—all the David Attenborough and that stuff. Lloyd happened to be an expert in goshawks, who are the most difficult hawks to train. He had trained two of his hawks [to] do the hunting scenes as stunt doubles, like in the Bourne films when you have the stunt double for Jason Bourne. Lloyd had trained them to fly with these little tiny drones next to them and also to work with a fantastic wildlife cameraman called Mark Payne-Gill. He goes off to South Africa to film turtles or whatever, but he’s brilliant at filming birds. It’s like a military operation filming those scenes.

For the interior scenes, we have two sisters called Mabel 1 and Mabel 2. They looked identical, but they had quite different personalities. We had five hawks altogether [including] Jess, who came all the way down from Scotland to live with Lloyd for those months while we were filming. Jess is the hawk that does all the playing. 

CULTURED: I imagine it creates a different energy on set to have this animal.

Lowthorpe: Everything was organized around the hawks—everything. All the crew were told to wear, as Lloyd said, plumage. We had to wear all dark colors. If you had bright green trainers on, you were sent off. When the hawks came on set, everybody had to hide. In those interior scenes, I was hiding behind a piece of furniture with my little monitor whispering things. Charlotte [Bruus Christensen, the director of photography] was in there, and she has beautiful blonde hair and Lloyd made her wrap her hair up in a cap. She had to wear the same cap every day because Lloyd said goshawks are very skittish. They didn’t like any change. So we all had to wear the same clothes. And Claire had to do a crash course in falconry before we started. Lloyd created a dummy camera with an easy rig and went around for at least three months before we filmed wearing that easy rig all the time just to get them used to a strange object. They really don’t like booms, the fluffy thing on the end of the sound pole. All the cameras had to be hidden all the time, little tiny microphones, behind a vase or somewhere.

CULTURED: And you told me director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors: Blue had a big influence on the film?

Lowthorpe: What really attracted Charlotte and me to that film was the intimacy of the camera with Juliette Binoche. It’s a film about grief and the protagonist has the camera on her nearly all the time. We knew that our film would also have that. That intimacy with the camera, and the compassion of the camera to the female character, is something we really was important to us. Weirdly, we were both collecting references separately and we both came up with that. 

Claire is such a fine actress. Everything is on her face in such subtle detail. In the beginning, when she answers the phone and learns her dad has died, she goes over to the fireplace and puts her head down, and she’s just in silhouette. You see a little tear. That’s one of my favorite shots in the whole film; it says so much about using light and shadow to chart an emotional journey. That’s what Krzysztof Kieślowski does brilliantly.

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It’s 2026, and Wolfgang Tillmans enjoys the kind of status that could easily tip over into stasis. The 57-year-old German artist, whose photography career spans nearly four decades, is fresh off a major exhibition at Paris’s Centre Pompidou (which he is careful to remind me was not a retrospective) and a 2022 survey at the Museum of Modern Art. It’s fitting that his exhibition of new photographs, sculptures, and video works at Regen Projects in Los Angeles is titled “Keep Movin’.”

Tillmans has managed the rare feat of transcending the art world’s small, insider circles and their spillover into fashion and music. His name is shorthand for a certain aesthetic of the 21st-century photograph: simple, austere beauty mixed with a deceptive amateurishness. (There is always a whiff of humor around his occasionally banal subjects. Two of my favorite Tillmans photos include plastic water bottles.) Despite this esteemed position, the artist seems to be following his exhibition title’s imperative: to continue. For someone who has carved out an aesthetic that has reached maximum—if diluted—saturation online in the last 15 years, he insists on constantly reevaluating what makes a contemporary image. “What’s on the walls is a [the result of a] 40-year practice,” he tells me, “of exploring what kinds of pictures are possible today.”

When we meet at the gallery in January, his show is mid-install—his assistant is in the midst of putting prints on the wall—but Tillmans is eagerly awaiting approval from the Mount Wilson Observatory to photograph through its telescope later that day. He’s animated, and as we begin talking, our tight 45 minutes turns into an hour.

The show feels like the result of someone sifting through recent material in search of connections, not with an endgame in mind. Tillmans seems to have formed “Keep Movin’” around a handful of general ideas or gestures—the social and political cycles and systems, as well as the processes that contribute to the construction of an image—and posits found and made materials to echo them. On the main gallery’s walls are large prints from various bodies of work, as well as unframed works on paper made with a photocopier, and a handful of ready-made sculptures. “The subject matter is potentially everything,” says Tillmans, “which doesn’t exactly make it easier.”

Several works depict moments of integration and connection: rivers flowing, ropes hauling ships to shore. In Nautical Ropes and Concrete Lifting Loops, 2025, industrial-grade nautical rope, a synthetic shade of bright blue, rests on the floor of the gallery like a sea creature washed ashore. Nearby is a close-up photograph of offal. The mind links the coiled rope with the squidgy animal intestine: both appear soft but are functionally strong. Tillmans is interested in these moments of confusion—when something unappealing is decontextualized into something beautiful, and vice versa. “I often work with our own expectations of beauty,” Tillmans tells me as we stand in the middle of the gallery looking down at Truth Study Center (LA03/04 Veiled Offal), which I at first mistook for a wool blanket. “Why do we think something is beautiful or not beautiful? Once you know what that is, why is it suddenly ugly?”

At the center of the gallery are a number of tables festooned with ephemera—from newspaper clippings of current events to stamps, drawings, and the brochure from the rope company that supplied the other sculptures. Tillmans titles these displays Truth Study Center, part of an ongoing practice he began in 2005. “I realized that most of the trouble in the world came from men claiming absolute truths, and that conflict and problems arose from that.” Combining these materials reflects the artist’s effort to conjure the truth of our times, laying information and misinformation side by side, examining mechanisms of manipulation in the media. The material reveals the absurdity of the times in which we are living, but the artist’s political message does not reach beyond acknowledgment to indictment. “I am a positive person, an optimist—almost,” he says. “I enjoy my eyes. I enjoy waking up in the morning, being alive. The work that I do is about play, experimentation, and discovery. I don’t want to have that obliterated by what goes on in the world.”

One work, in particular, captures this merry observational precision. Tucked in one corner and playing on a loop is the video Wild Carrot, 2025, of a flower blowing in the wind. The blossom quivers, its concave structure containing what look like hundreds of smaller flowers tucked inside it. The film is accompanied by a tinkling soundtrack Tillmans made himself on the kalimba. “I had a moment—let’s not call it an epiphany, but a moment—and I was able to translate it, without having scripted it or without huge technical effort,” says Tillmans of the video work. “It’s just on the right side of amateur, and just technically satisfying enough that it really works. That’s what I want the photographs to do as well; they look like you could have seen them with your own eyes.” (Tillmans famously eschews any kind of digital manipulation or special effects in his work.) “I don’t want to set up a barrier that puts the audience down,” he continues. “I try to present the work with a low threshold. But behind that, of course, is an aim to master the medium to its greatest potential with the simplest of means.”

The almost naive whimsy of the bobbing flower left me with the sense that this person knows how to look—really look.

Rafael de Cárdenas, designer and founder of RAFAELDECARDENAS Ltd.

How do I get comfortable at home?

Comfort should always be hidden. Whatever you do, don’t be obvious about it. Without a soupçon of discomfort—or the visual impression of it—a home is never actually that comfortable.

Taylor Johnston and Ed Bowen, founders of Issima

How long will it take my garden to reach its final form?

Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts. Rarely do you get an opportunity to make a garden and see it 10, 15, 20, or even 30 years later, when it actually starts to become something. Another tip: Resist tidying your garden like it’s an extension of the indoors. Letting your garden stay in its desiccated skeletal form late into spring, allows bugs to hibernate over winter, and lay eggs into the hollow stems. You’re encouraging an ecosystem by doing nothing. New plants should only get watered until they get a toehold, and then they’re on their own—sink or swim.

The point is, take your time. Get familiar with annuals, perennials, biennials, woody plants, vines, tropical plants. Don’t limit yourself. Treat it like a lifelong thing.

Bethan Laura Wood, designer

What’s the best way to make space for my pet?

Give in! Your home is no longer your own. It is a vessel for your pet’s every whim and their fur. I’m lucky—Wilma is a non-chewing tiny creature who I have to confirm is breathing half the time because she is so still. I didn’t have to change much. 

When I adopted her, I did move many of my objects and rugs (believe me, that’s a lot of stuff) into a room she couldn’t access while I figured her out. Now, I use small throws on any surface she claims, and I’ve become one with my Muji lint roller. I persuade my mum, with photos of Wilma in carefully curated neckerchiefs, to make washable dog bed covers out of vintage fabrics to match my home.

For food and water, I use shallow, found ceramics. Her toys live in a patterned box, and I rotate them to keep things fresh. You don’t think you’ll become one of us until…

Oh, and a word of warning: If you’re getting a dog, just give away any panettone gifts from your well-meaning Italian friends on the spot. Nothing sucks the joy from a party—or the money from your bank account—faster than rushing to the vet while your dog throws up the jewel-like sultana they scarfed down.

Antonio DiTommaso, professor at School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University

What should I do with my weeds (other than pull them out)?

What is a weed? Some people say it’s a plant out of place. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A weed is a plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.” The term “weed” is very human-centered. These are plants, and they were around before humans.

As a weed ecologist, I feel there is value to these plants. Think about the common milkweed, which is a major food source of the monarch butterfly. In Canada, people use its little fluff to insulate jackets and put bags of it along the beaches to absorb oil spills. Sheep sorrel has this lemony taste that you can put in salads, same with common purslane and tender lamb’s quarter. And why do we have to get rid of dandelions? They’re the first thing that bees love to have. We can make dandelion wine. Why fight it? 

Oana Stănescu, architect and curator

How can I make my space more interactive?

A central design—fluid, flexible, open, with layered lighting and textures, all facing each other, instead of away. Different proximities, contrast between pieces to tease out choice, soft offset by hard, one oversized presence to order the rest, following natural light or leaning towards a view.

Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen, fashion designer

How does getting dressed relate to designing a space?

Clothing becomes an extension of the soul when worn. Likewise, the garments we strip off, discard, or hang from furniture become a physical reminder of our presence, our way of making any space we inhabit our home. A simple reminder of lives led, a suggestion of the impending past and future, a self once worn by us, now worn by a room.

Rodman Primack and Rudy Weissenberg, designers and founders of AGO: iNTERiORS

What’s the best way to bring pattern into my life?

Seriously, stop thinking about it. Just commit. Allow patterns into your wardrobe and home in equal measure. Consider scale and weight, but don’t obsess—small cotton or linen checks, windowpanes, and stripes mixed with big florals or vintage cut velvets, hand-embroidered pieces from Turkey, Guatemala, India… Whatever you do, don’t mix and match from only one shop or purveyor—that zaps all the energy. Pattern is the adjective in the sentence, the spice in the dish, so get comfortable with it and push it to the edge; the more you have, the more you’ll want.

Lindsey Adelman, lighting designer and founder of Lindsey Adelman Studio

What’s the best way to set a mood?

Dim it all the way down. Light that is barely there and golden in hue, spread out between many points throughout a space, creates softness, privacy, and a conspiratorial feeling.

Tin Nguyen, artist and co-founder of CFGNY

How do I build an outdoor shower?

Consider the sun. Are you exposed to southern light, giving you daylight for many hours, or are you facing west to reveal the setting sun? Observe your surroundings. Could your shower head provide irrigation for nearby plants? Is privacy necessary, or can you eliminate walls and stand before a forest of redwood trees, absorbing oxygen through every pore of your skin? Of course, make it fab with additional details: a towel rack made of foraged tree branches, a mosaic bath mat made of pebbles. The mosaic could be a portrait of your pet, your mother’s birthday, or it could say “New York City Forever.” The world is your oyster.

Polymode, graphic designers

How do I choose a font that suits my personality?

You might think picking a typeface is a hyper-rational exercise. It’s not. It’s about trusting your gut and finding a form that feels right. We contain multitudes; consider a variable font. Where are you on the axis today? Bold, italic, thin, or heavy? You can be all or nothing—just don’t choose a default.

Matylda Krzykowski, designer and artistic lead at CIVIC

How do I design my home for fun?

In the 1970s and 1980s, the German Partykeller (essentially a man cave for all) was the answer. It had a nostalgic interior and a wood-paneled bar in the center. One could listen to music, enjoy cold beverages, play games, relax. Party cellars have experienced a decline in popularity, but I suggest we revive them.

Josh Itiola, designer at Vitsœ

How should I wrangle my books and magazines?

Respect your collection enough to give it structure. Books belong on a shelf. No piles along the floor, no leaning towers on the windowsill, and absolutely no books in your nonfunctional fireplace. Any shelf will do. It doesn’t have to be a designer setup, just give them a proper home.

When you organize them, please—not by color. Let’s move on from all that. Let your relationship with your books shape the system. Group by genre or topic if that helps you navigate, but don’t lock in. Think of your shelves as a living archive.

Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, architects and founders of Johnston Marklee 

What should I look for in a dining chair?

A good dining chair is like a good friend: If you want to be left alone, they will leave you alone. But if you engage, they will tell you a lot. They are dignified from behind and supportive in front. They are completely invisible yet always in sight. They move in herds; they are never alone.

Billy Cotton, interior designer and founder of Billy Cotton Studio

What is the greatest design lesson you learned from a mentor?

Tom Delavan taught me about needing half of what you think you need to make a room successful. Purge your mind and your schemes in the process.

Joanna Glovinsky, gardener and founder of Fruitstitute

How do I graft the fruit tree of my dreams?

Fruit trees are like purebred dogs—they’re made by humans, not nature. We take the root stock of a size-appropriate, disease-resistant, climate-appropriate tree and a cutting of a Meyer lemon or a Red Baron peach and we merge them; two bodies in one.

Grafting is ancient knowledge and its own specialty—50 percent of tree success is “right tree, right place.” So first, figure out what kind of fruit you want. Do you have the space for it? Don’t put your avocado on top of a slope. Put it at the bottom of a hill, collecting water and protected from the wind. And remember: A happy, healthy fruit tree comes with the things that eat the fruit, like squirrels and birds. We call that your fruit tax.

James Wines, architect and co-founder of Site

How can I bring irony into my interior?

Søren Kierkegaard said, “Irony is the birth-pangs of the objective mind.” This observation credits irony with humanity’s capacity to see the world more clearly, emphasizing the discrepancies between perception and reality. In short, it’s not easy. I have no rules to impart. Success or failure depends on the designer’s ability to inject physical ingredients into commonplace living spaces that question the redundancies of such environments in the first place.

Dan Rosen, comedian and design snob

How do I avoid getting roasted on Dan Rosen’s Instagram?

Just don’t get famous! It’s really very simple. Resist the temptation. Go back to grad school, do whatever you have to do! If, by some unfortunate twist of fate, you do find yourself on the wrong side of fame, and some snot-nosed Condé editor emails begging to showcase your impeccable taste—so refined, they heard you actually picked a lot of the pieces yourself, you little aesthete, you—click “Reply,” and refuse.

Artwork by Ebecho Muslimova

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Amanda Precourt spent the last nine years collecting contemporary art at a furious pace—while building a home tailored to showcase the trove. “I would find a piece then design a room around it, using art as an active participant in the conversation,” says the 52-year-old philanthropist as she tours me around her recently completed 8,000-square-foot residence. 

The exterior conditions of Precourt’s new digs are as singular as what’s contained inside: The home is perched atop a former fortune cookie factory in Denver’s Baker neighborhood, which the real estate developer, who launched her own firm, AJP Realty and Design, in 2009, repurposed into a non-commercial art space that opened to the public last May.

Precourt first came across the condemned factory in 2016, shortly after she began collecting, and immediately imagined building a home on its roof. It was an ambitious plan: The ceiling was caving in, and paper fortune slips floated in puddles of standing water inside. “As a developer, this was certainly the most complex project I’ve ever done but [also] the most rewarding,” says Precourt, who salvaged the original brick walls and wood-beamed ceiling from the 1941 structure to frame what she dubbed Cookie Factory—5,700 square feet of public gallery space that is entirely self-funded and free to access. 

Inside, Precourt—along with her partner, Andrew Jensdotter, who serves as director of exhibitions, and curator Jérôme Sans, who has assumed the role of artistic director—invites artists to make site-specific work inspired by Colorado. Twenty-five hundred people attended the opening of Cookie Factory’s inaugural exhibition with Sam Falls last year. The art space’s second exhibition, featuring works by Gary Simmons, is on view through May 9. 

“We wanted to create an art-forward life and share it with the community,” says Precourt, an outspoken mental health advocate who is open about her experiences with attempted suicide and recovery. “I got a second chance at life, and I need to give back. It’s my karmic duty.” 

The piece that sparked Precourt’s collecting trajectory was Jeffrey Gibson’s Know Your Magic, Baby, 2016, a beaded punching bag that she encountered at New York’s Marc Straus Gallery that same year. Precourt worked with her close friend Kim Gould, the art advisor who died unexpectedly in 2023, to acquire it. Today, Gibson’s sculpture hangs in Precourt’s home framed by a floor-to-ceiling window, a beacon drawing the attention of passersby. 

These days, the stories that accompany the works in the couple’s collection fill the house as much as the works themselves: In the entertainment room, a Rashid Johnson mixed-media Untitled Escape Collage, 2019, blankets an entire wall. Precourt bonded with the artist over their shared experiences with recovery. In an interior courtyard, an otherworldly totemic figure in a little pink dress by Huma Bhabha stands like a sentinel, presiding over Precourt while she reads or practices yoga. “We predicted it would scare the daylight out of my mother—and it did,” Jensdotter recalls.

Covering an entire wall of the living room is Anselm Kiefer’s Engel der Geschichte, a monumental mixed-media painting completed and acquired in 2017. It weighs nearly 2,700 pounds and stretches 21 feet. “The whole building was engineered to support [it],” Precourt says. Jensdotter, an artist who counts the German painter among his influences, describes how Kiefer sprayed this densely layered landscape piece with molten lead, causing the surface of the canvas to peel and curl and creating two wing-shaped forms that suggest a phoenix rising from the ashes. “I’ve been through some tough times,” adds Precourt, “and that idea of resurrection and resilience really spoke to me.”

By this point, the couple has amassed more than 140 works by artists including Lauren Halsey, Sterling Ruby, Mary Weatherford, Fred Eversley, Barbara Kruger, and El Anatsui. “I look at our collection, and there’s a lot of discussion about otherness, pain, struggle—and also reconciliation, hope. We’re not looking at values and buying based on [the] market,” Precourt concludes. “Every piece, I feel it in my gut.”