‘The Sweet East' Director Slams A24 As “Factory" Filmmaking and “Not Independent Cinema"

How can a movie studio actually have a cult following? It goes against everything we know about the rules of the game. Even in the ‘90s, an indie boutique arthouse company like Miramax couldn’t muster up the kind of unabashed following A24 has attained.

Then again, A24 has become a last bastion for marquee independent productions in the US, along with Neon, and for that we should be grateful that they exist. Marketing the brand is one thing but helping develop filmmakers like The Safdies, Sean Baker and others is wonderful.

One person who isn’t a fan is “The Sweet East” filmmaker Sean Price Williams. His film premiered at Cannes last year, and is now being released in France. Cahiers du Cinema gave ‘Sweet East’ an all-too-rare five star rating on AlloCine. If you can somehow find a way to watch it, Williams’ film is certainly a unique cinematic experience worth giving a chance to.

While promoting the film, in an interview with Liberation, Williams stated that what we deem as “counter culture” today isn’t really that, but rather a mainstreamed version of it, and then specifically cited A24 as an example:

What the French consider to be U.S. independent cinema is not independent cinema at all,” he sneers. “A24 is not indie. It's a studio. A factory […] Their films are not films, they are mathematical formulas."

Williams’ career is just taking off, so this is quite the thing for a young director to say, especially since A24 tends to be one of the few games in town to fund the kind of films Williams will likely be seeking funding for in the near future.

What A24 has basically been able to do is make the post-screening experience just as interesting for fans as the film itself. That’s probably one of the aspects that irks Williams.

People will watch something like “Everything Everywhere All At Once” and then go straight to social media, sharing memes, gifs, tweets of the film. The actual screening experience gets lost for branding. Oh, and look, you can also buy those EEAAO hot dog fingers on A24’s online store. If that doesn’t fit your fancy, how about an ‘Iron Claw’ action figure?

The idea of turning a cinematic experience into something you can own via physical object is not far-off from the marketing ideas behind Marvel or Star Wars. Being an A24 fan now is a “status,” a kind of cult that, according to Williams, removes them from the cinema.

I think it’s important to note that, for all the qualms some folks might have with A24, it’s still distributing films that its rival studios might not even dare invest in. Think of the filmmakers they’ve backed these last few years: Harmony Korine, Sofia Coppola, Jonathan Glazer, Noah Baumbach, Robert Eggers, Trey Edward Schults, Jeremy Saulnier, Yorgos Lanthimos, Andrea Arnold, David Lowery, The Safdies, Sean Baker, Ari Aster, Kelly Reichardt, among many more.

While we’re at it, “The Sweet East” is this wonderfully gonzo vision, and well worth your time — it’s the type of love it or hate statement that we fully approve of here. Ironically enough, when it first screened at Cannes, many thought A24 could be the one to pick it up for distribution. Utopia ended up snatching it. It’s definitely not an easy film to market — if you’ve seen it, then you understand what I’m saying.