Behind Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces List

'Filmmaker' editor Scott Macaulay on how the list is conceived, how it's changed, and the story it tells.

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This past weekend, Filmmaker magazine commemorated its 25th year of publishing its 25 New Faces of Independent Film list with a short series of works by filmmakers from past and present lists, over at Metrograph. (The series continues through Jan. 15 through Metrograph at Home.)

The New Faces list has become one of the magazine’s most anticipated features. But it began, in 1998, as a page-filler. “The summer months used to be a wasteland for independent film releases,” says founding editor Scott Macaulay. “I remember one night sitting in the office and saying, ‘Rather than cover at all these films we're not that enthusiastic about, why don't we take a big chunk of the magazine and devote it to up-and-coming people?’"

Macaulay and his colleagues’ goal for the list was for it to be “a genuine place for discovery” rather than yet another “publicist-driven list of people who are by and large already known within the film community.” And they also wanted to spotlight a diversity of work—both in the faces themselves and the interests, forms, and skillsets of the artists. “There's always been a mix of feature filmmakers with more experimental filmmakers with below-the-line people with people working in new media, or now VR,” Macaulay says.

Scott Macaulay helped found Filmmaker magazine in 1992.

I spoke to Macaulay about Filmmaker’s approach to creating the list, trends he’s noticed bubbling up right now, and the advice he gives young filmmakers.

When you started the list, what did the process of discovery entail? Where were you looking for people? 

The early years of the magazine, we would just canvas a lot of colleagues. As part of the job we look at a lot of work each year. It probably started with a smaller group of recommenders, and now I blast maybe 200 people asking for recommendations. And then the other thing is we all keep a running list of work we see throughout the year. 

The reason we chose "25 new faces" rather than the "25 best new filmmakers" was because we wanted to avoid that kind of bombast. Hopefully there's a kind of modesty built into the title. We're a small team and we're not canvasing the whole world. That's why it's very American independent focused. 

When you're looking at people for the list, do you tend to look more at a single work that impresses you or a body of work as a whole? 

I think it's a little bit of both. A lot of these people are up-and-coming young filmmakers, so maybe there isn't a broad body of work yet. I would say in almost all cases there is one work that pops out. We keep a running database of everyone we've looked at from previous years. So one of the things we do each year is look back at the previous year's database. And maybe if someone made a short that people have liked but didn't love, we'll look back and see, Ok, what has this person done the next year? 

The list has always been something of a passion list. Someone on the team is always very passionate about that person, and often that is motivated by a work that is really great and popped out that year. 

You write in this year’s editor’s note, “think of the “25” as a kind of geological survey, a dig into the new impulses, ideas and forces that will bring both new stories and new forms of storytelling to the surface in the years ahead.” What are some of the new impulses, ideas, and forces you’ve noticed?