The Oscar-qualifying Cleveland International Film Festival welcomes Chicago filmmaker / actor Clare Cooney for the world premiere of her short film After: A Love Story, an intimate story of a couple trying to bridge the space that has emerged between them after surviving a violent event, this week. Cooney previously wrote, directed, edited, and starred in Runner, a chilling short film that played at 15 film festivals, collected six awards, and garnered her a “Filmmaker to Watch” nomination from the Oscar-qualifying Atlanta Film Festival. Her followup Pick Up made its festival premiere at the Oscar-qualifying Indy Shorts Film Festival  last year after already having received a half a million views on Omeleto. Detect a pattern?

The 15 minute short, filmed with a skeleton cast and crew, is about ex-lovers who reconnect on a car ride during the pandemic. Then their masks come...

American media magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist Mark Zuckerberg wants to help you make the movies you want to see. Known for co-founding the social media giant Facebook, Zuckerberg has acquired WMM through parent company Meta Platforms. We Make Movies will now operate under the moniker We Make Metaverse, as the team prepares to implement innovative strategies envisioned by Zuckerberg, ushering in a new generation of technological advances to enhance the essence of community. 

What exactly is the nebulous concept of the metaverse? The term can can be traced back to Neal Stephenson and his canonized 1992 dystopian cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. "Like any place in Reality, the Street is subject to development. Developers can build their own small streets feeding off of the main one. They can build buildings, parks, signs, as well as things that do not exist in Reality, such as vast hovering overhead light...

Congrats to WMM members, producer/director Fiona McDougall and writer/interviewer Jonathan Villet of OneWorld Communications for landing a special selection designation at the Sonoma International Film Festival! Their short documentary Finding Snow White screens at the festival (celebrating its 25th anniversary!) from March 23rd until March 27th. The film is an incredible contribution to the field of mental health. A powerful message around resilience, the human spirit, and the ways in which we can train ourselves to live life in the face of adversity. Beautiful and poignant.

We had a moment to catch up with the filmmakers - take a read, watch the trailer at the bottom of the piece, and catch the film at the festival if you can. 

WMM: What compelled you to make this film?

JV: I was compelled to make this film for a few reasons – the amazing personal journey of Ditta Oliker after the tragedy of her son’s murder, demonstrates how people can...

The WMM International Film Festival is in its fourth year! Known for celebrating the Do-It-Yourself filmmaking aesthetic, WMMIntl serves to highlight DIY filmmakers across the spectrum of the industry in every genre. From horror to drama, comedy to documentary, experimental and underground to video art, we salute filmmakers who embrace the true indie spirit by making quality art on their own terms. The festival provides networking and social events, industry panels, a showcase of shorts, features, and series from around the world, live multi-media performances, and an awards ceremony.

By bringing filmmakers of all ilks together, WMMIntl strives to bolster artists and revitalize the industry that content creators and artists want to be a part of. Yet, with so many film festivals to choose from and the cost of submissions, it can be hard to decide where to invest. We asked our festival showrunners to give us some insight into their process and show us how...

We Make Movies is putting its money where its mouth is and officially greenlighting three of YOUR feature films in 2022! Our Make Your Feature competition invited anyone with a kernel of an idea or a full screenplay to pitch their project to a panel of investors and the WMM community for the opportunity to land a $25,000 investment, tens of thousands of dollars worth of resources and assistance to ACTUALLY shoot their movie. Submissions opened on May 5 2021. We received 127 submissions, narrowed it down to 36 semi-finalists, then we had 14 filmmakers pitch our judges one last time on October 20th, 2021.

… now, DRUMROLL PLEASE! After an inspiring night of final pitches (watch the winning presentations below) and several weeks of impassioned deliberation, our panel of judges, including investors Sam Mestman, Rob Ness, and Cate Caplin have selected the feature films they will be investing in and advancing to pre-production. The winning filmmakers and films of our inaugural Make...