Artistic Differences returns with an introspective and resonant conversation featuring filmmaker Masha Chernaya focusing on her daring debut feature, The Shards, which was the winner of the Doclisboa Film Festival's International Competition and the recipient of the Doc Alliance Award for Best Feature Film. This prestigious award was just announced at this year’s Cannes Film Festival where the jury praised the film “for its unique cinematic qualities” and honored its “cinematic language that is quiet, resistant to classic narrative structures, and develops a striking ability to merge personal and collective mourning.”

Hosts Cíntia Gil and Christopher Allen unpack Chernaya’s poetic yet unsparing style, which centers on a young woman as she is saying goodbye to her homeland and follows her attempt to process a cascade of personal losses — including the death of her mother and the escape of her partner from military conscription — within the silence and surveillance of contemporary Russia. Chernaya opens up about her hybrid creative process, blending scripted scenes with documentary footage, private phone videos, and moments of raw improvisation. The conversation traces the intimate making of the film, shot over seven years on minimal resources and maximal instinct. She also speaks about the larger forces that shaped it: state repression, systemic grief, and the unstable architecture of memory.Throughout, Chernaya speaks candidly about performing her own pain for the camera. “I am not just a crying girl with grief and anger,” she says. “I’m also a big manipulator—I’m crying, but I’m calling the camera.” Together, the hosts and filmmaker examine how The Shards reclaims fragmented narratives and contested personal histories through aesthetic experimentation and performative vulnerability. Chernaya reflects on finding strength in ambivalence, wielding her own image as both shield and weapon, and embracing contradiction as a radical formal strategy.

Listen in for an atmospheric and emotionally charged exchange on image-making under pressure, resisting closure, and documenting oneself as both witness and artist.

And don’t forget! You can watch The Shards too! It’s now streaming on the UnionDocs Membership.Big thanks to our incredible team:

Editor: Alison Rodgers

Mixer: Pedro Castro

Music: Andres Simões

Production Support: Tara Kesavan, A.S.M Kobayashi

This is a production of UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art.

ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES is co-curated and co-organized by Cíntia Gil, Christopher Allen & Jenny Miller.

Artistic Differences returns with an atmospheric conversation with filmmaker Tyler Taormina (Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, Ham on Rye)! Hosts Cíntia Gil and Christopher Allen sit down with Taormina to discuss his haunting second feature, Happer’s Comet, a film that explores the emotional architecture of suburbia and the strange nocturnal magic of the eventide hours.

The discussion weaves through memory, midnight wanderings, and the unseen forces that shape suburban life. Taormina reflects on how his teenage years—sneaking across car-centric landscapes in search of intimacy—laid the foundation for a cinematic style he calls the "ecosystem film.” In Happer’s Comet, he crafts a dreamlike mosaic of people moving through a shared space, rarely together, but instead connected through glances, surveillance, and a palpable sense of disquiet.

The conversation delves into the delicate tension between control and spontaneity in Taormina's filmmaking. He reflects on the unpredictability of casting, where discovery often outweighs intention, and how his creative process thrives in the uncharted spaces between light, color, and the unsaid connections between people.

Taormina also touches on the tension between tradition and innovation in cinema, sharing how he blends American pop culture with European arthouse and East Asian slow cinema influences. His films resist conventional resolutions, instead leaving viewers with a sense of mystery and unresolved emotions. Tune in for a conversation that moves from the personal to the philosophical, from quiet suburban streets to the intimate corners of cinematic form. Listen in, and don't forget, Happer’s Comet is streaming now on the UnionDocs Membership platform—best watched on a big screen, loud speakers, and of course, in the dark!And considering joining next month’s cineclub on the first Saturday, as always. Sign up!

Thanks to our incredible team!

Editor: Alison RodgersMixer: Pedro Castro

Music: Andres Simoes

Production support: Tara Kesavan

Additional UnionDocs support provided by A.S.M Kobayashi & Scott Limbacher

This is a production of UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art.

ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES is co-curated and co-organized by Cíntia Gil, Christopher Allen & Jenny Miller.

Artistic Differences returns with a revelatory conversation with filmmaker Trương Minh Quý, whose work reshapes our understanding of memory, history, and exile. In this latest episode, our hosts Cintia Gil and Christopher Allen sit down with Quý to explore his radical approach to storytelling—one that collapses time, unsettles the distinction between reality and imagination, and challenges who gets to author history.

For Quý, home is never fixed—it is something we carry, something that is constantly reimagined. His poetic 2019 film The Tree House unfolds through the gaze of a filmmaker exiled on Mars, looking back at a Vietnam that is fragmented, obscured, and slipping away. Through intimate oral histories and archival images, Quý questions how history is recorded, what gets preserved, and why some stories are left to disappear. His filmmaking resists singular authorship, instead offering something more porous—a space where voices, histories, and memories converge. The Tree House asks: What if history isn’t linear, but something that overlaps, loops, and erodes? What if time itself is a kind of exile?

In the episode, he speaks about the paradox of making films that document a reality he can no longer access, the philosophical underpinnings of his editing choices, and the eerie way censorship has made him visible in precisely the way he sought to evade. He describes how state power manufactures fear, creating invisible obstacles that shape not just artistic freedom, but the very way a filmmaker sees themselves.

Tune in! And if you want to step further into Quý’s world, watch The Tree House — the film is now streaming on the UnionDocs membership!

And considering joining next month’s cineclub on the first Saturday of December. Sign up!

Thanks to our incredible team!

Editor: Alison Rodgers

Mixer: Pedro Castro

Music: Andres Simoes

Production support: Tara Kesavan

Additional UnionDocs support provided by A.S.M Kobayashi & Scott Limbacher

This is a production of UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art.

ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES is co-curated and co-organized by Cíntia Gil, Christopher Allen & Jenny Miller.