We Need to Talk About Oscar brings you inside the creative process with the artists behind modern film and television. Anchored by the awards conversation but passionate about indie cinema, each episode bridges technical filmmaking with rich, personal storytelling.
Sky Hopinka gathers his community and lets them be seen in ‘Powwow People’
For ‘Powwow People,’ filmmaker Sky Hopinka and his collaborators built the very gathering they filmed, a powwow held over three days at Seattle’s Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center. Sky recalls the first obstacle that made the project feel less like a shoot and more like hosting a community event. Coordinator Gina Bluebird-Stacona anchors the weekend, and he describes how watching her work up close shifted his understanding of what it takes to create a space where people feel safe.
Drumming and dancing hum constantly beneath the film, yet its attention settles on the generations sharing time along the edges. Sky and cinematographer Shaandiin Tome describe the discipline that kept the lens there instead of chasing the spectacle at the center. The central figures appear as voices over the footage rather than through sit down interviews, and Sky pinpoints when that approach took hold. With emcee Ruben Littlehead and Arena Director Quanah Matheson already steering the day, he also explains how control of the room’s rhythm got shared.
Jamie John, a nonbinary dancer taking part in the traditionally female Jingle Dance, brings tradition and change into the same frame, and Sky details how the two worked together so that their presence felt like pure celebration. The film then settles into a half hour unbroken take of a Northern Traditional dance special, and Sky pinpoints the moment he knew everything else could fall away. He also lays out the missteps he sees well meaning documentary crews make when entering Indigenous gatherings, missteps this film was built to avoid.
6 Oct 2026
We Need to Talk About Emmy #32: Jesse McKeown on holding onto a way of life in 'Below'
Creator Jesse McKeown built 'Below' around a premise easy to sum up in a sentence, a sea creature terrorizing a small town, and explains how he kept that pitch from overshadowing the family drama and economic unraveling he actually wanted to tell. Having spent years visiting Newfoundland and growing attached to it long before cameras rolled, he talks through the strange task of shooting the place he loves in a way meant to feel threatening and dread soaked on screen.
Jesse walks us through how he and his crew worked to avoid the flattened, gray-blue look often applied to coastal or remote settings, aiming instead for something textured and alive. He set the story during a Come Home Year, a real Newfoundland tradition that pulls former residents back into town, giving him a built-in way to stage friction between people who stuck around through hard times and those returning from elsewhere.
Jesse also reflects on premiering the opening episodes at TIFF on a massive cinema screen, even though the show was conceived for television, and how designing for home viewing shaped his choices around both open water sequences and tighter interior scenes. At its core, he frames the show's real threat as change itself, a community watching its industry and way of life slip away, and considers how his own years navigating a constantly shifting television business fed into how he wrote these characters reacting to losing theirs.
(Photo: Courtesy of Netflix)
29 Sept 2026
Thomas Leisten Schneider on what family hands down in 'Love - Love'
Writer-director Thomas Leisten Schneider makes his feature debut with 'Love - Love,' moving from the quick turnaround of commercials and shorts like 'Point and Shoot' into a much longer, more demanding shoot. He reflects on the unexpected challenges of holding onto a singular vision over that extended timeline, and on growing up between France and the US, a background that shaped his outsider's fascination with the road trip as a distinctly American form, and with the bleak, otherworldly quiet of the Salton Sea as a setting.
Much of the conversation centers on directing Haley Joel Osment as Andy, a character living with schizophrenia, and how Thomas balanced guiding that performance with trusting what Osment discovered on his own, including a moment on set that reshaped his sense of the character entirely. He also discusses casting Beck Bennett as Jeff, a brother pulled suddenly into caregiving while still searching for his own footing, and how he used the absurdity of the entertainment industry to offset the story's heavier emotional terrain.
Thomas connects his theater background to the rehearsal process he built for both actors, aiming for something true beneath the film's shifts between humor and pain. He also unpacks the title's tennis roots and how they tie into Bruce's past as a disgraced professional, before reflecting on how far he's come since his first day on set and what that journey revealed about his voice as a filmmaker.
Who has been a guest on We Need to Talk About Oscar
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Sarah Friedland
Fawzia Mirza
Alex Mallis
Travis Wood
Wes Auburn
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
1,347
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 69 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
85
Social presence
0
YouTube
74
Engagement
60
Contact We Need to Talk About Oscar
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