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Ryan J. Sloan's feature debut Gazer is a pensive puzzler that keeps the audience at arm's length. Its traits are grainy visuals, an untrustworthy narrator, and chilly noir vibes on a low frequency. Sloan and co-writer Ariella Mastroianni (who plays the film's time-blind lead) explore a New Jersey mystery that keeps methods low and slow. Gazer's an intimate thriller with a hyper-focused scope, but it's also a lethargic experience by choice. Visual storytelling is everything to Sloan's approach, perhaps to a detriment.

Mastroianni stars as Frankie Rhodes, a young single mother who struggles to perceive lengths of time. The neurological condition, known as "dyschronometria," prevents her from holding down simple jobs like being a gas station attendant. She uses self-recorded cassette tapes that remind her to pay attention, as she tries to fixate on details—she gazes into windows and, in her head, creates lives for unknown people.

Frankie (Ariella Mastroianni) spends much of Ryan J. Sloan’s Gazer staring at strangers so she can maintain some grip on reality. Barely hanging on to a poverty-wracked existence, she finds a sense of meaning in creating backstories for those she surveils. After believing she has seen a woman, Paige (Renee Gagner), being threatened in an apartment building that she watches, the sylph-like Frankie gets sucked into an increasingly baffling mystery that threatens to completely upend her life, while also illuminating aspects of her past for viewers.

Located somewhere near the intersection of The Conversation and Memento, Sloan’s feature-length directorial debut marries the former’s obsession with watching to the latter’s meditations on the nature of perception. Like both films, it jolts the wandering, obsessive nature of its main characters with an interruption of violence and sews confusion throughout.

The stated reason for Frankie’s behavior is that...

Film is so back. Shooting on Kodak film continues to be both a more popular choice among filmmakers and to gather more Oscar prestige. At this year’s Academy Awards Sean Baker’s Best Picture winner, “Anora,” was shot on 35mm by cinematographer Drew Daniels; Brady Corbet’s Best Cinematography winner, “The Brutalist,” was shot on 35mm VistaVision to great aplomb by Dp Lol Crawley; Walter Salles’ Best International Feature Film winner, “I’m Still Here,” was shot on both 35mm and S8mm by cinematographer Adrian Teijido; and the Best Live Action Short winner, “I’m Not a Robot,” was also shot on 35mm.

This year looks set to build on that success. There will be a cohort of prominent movies captured on film from some of the usual analog-loving directors: Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt,” Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme,...

The tension within Ryan J. Sloan’s indie directorial debut “Gazer” is almost unparalleled: Of course the IndieWire review pointed to comparisons between Martin Scorsese, David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma, and Christopher Nolan when it came to decoding just how thrilling the feature is.

“Gazer,” which was among our favorite movies at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, premiered during the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. Metrograph Pictures later acquired the North American rights to the neo-noir heist thriller, with Head of Metrograph Pictures David Laub saying in a press statement just how much writer/director Sloan’s vision echoes cinema history.

“‘Gazer’ is a movie born of cinema and those who love it,” Laub said, deeming the feature “a brilliant homage to the unforgettable New York thrillers of the 1970s and 1980s.”

Well, we couldn’t agree more. Sloan, who co-wrote the film with breakout lead star Ariella Mastroianni, filmed “Gazer” over weekends...

At this year's Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, Collider's Perri Nemiroff met the trio behind Gazer, a driving neo-noir that was the very definition of a team effort. Co-writer, director, and producer Ryan J. Sloan, co-writer, star, and producer Ariella Mastroianni, and cinematographer Matheus Bastos stopped by to chat about the journey from their two-year shoot to the World Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival to sharing their film with the Fantastic Fest crowd.

Ryan J. Sloan’s “Gazer” is a classic thriller that will surely have Cannes audiences on the edge of their seats when it world premieres in competition in Directors’ Fortnight at this year’s festival.

Set in New Jersey and starring Sloan’s partner Ariella Mastroianni, “Gazer” is the story of Frankie, a young mother with a rare degenerative brain condition called dyschronometria. The disease causes her to struggle to perceive time, which makes holding down a steady job nearly impossible. So, when a mysterious woman offers her a risky job, she takes it, unaware of the dark consequences of her decision.

While the thematic notes of a classic Hitchcockian thriller are plain to see on screen, one thing that really sets “Gazer” apart from most films – especially American films – that make it to Cannes is that the project was entirely self-financed and produced.

There were no production companies (apart...