Independent filmmaker Nicole Holofcener (in conversation with Mary Kate O’Flanagan) talks about making character-driven films in a market that wants high-octane franchises, attracting top-flight cast to low-budget films, making a fictional world seem real and Oscar success with Can You Ever Forgive Me?  This session is packed with insights into the process and craft of storytelling on screen, which will inform the practice of any screenwriter or director.

Nicole Holofcener 

Nicole Holofcener has written and directed six films – Walking and Talking, Lovely & Amazing, Friends With Money, Please Give and Enough Said. Her latest was The Land of Steady Habits for Netflix. She wrote the screenplay for Can You Ever Forgive Me, in which she was nominated for an academy award. Nicole has directed numerous television shows, and is currently working including an original script. She recently co-wrote the script for Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel which is in production.

Mary Kate O’Flanagan

Mary Kate O’Flanagan is an award-winning writer and story consultant working in the film and television industry. She works with writers in The UK, The US, South Africa, and across Europe. She has designed and delivered training in Storytelling On The Screen in The Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Malta, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, The UK and The US as well as in her native Ireland.

Mary Kate works as a credited co-writer and an uncredited script doctor. With her sister Rachel O’Flanagan, she gives training in the storytelling skills for professionals in cinema and television. They are particularly interested in the stories individuals and entities tell about themselves and how those stories inevitably shape their futures. You can see more about their work on www.adramaticimprovement.com

Mary Kate was Ireland’s First Grand Slam Champion Storyteller at The Moth. She was also a Grand Slam Champion Storyteller at The Moth in Los Angeles and a Champion Storyteller at The Dublin StorySlam. You can hear one of her stories on The Moth Radio Hour at: https://themoth.org/stories/carry-him-shoulder-high
She is working on turning her stories into a piece of theatre.

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