Joshua Marston

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Joshua Jacob Marston (born August 13, 1968 in Los Angeles County , California ) is an American film director and screenwriter . He gained international fame with his award-winning feature film debut Maria voll der Gnade (2004).

biography

Training and first short film

Joshua Marston grew up in Southern California , where he studied sociology at the University of California, Berkeley . However, he gave up his studies after two years due to poor grades. Having already in his high school -time Paris had visited, he later moved to the French capital, where he 1990/91 work with American magazines Life and ABC News found. Marston then lived in Prague for a year , teaching English at a high school. He also toured Southeast Asia .

Marston had come into contact with photography during his schooling and travels. At the same time, he was interested in people's stories. “It was always a kind of applied anthropology, ” said the linguistically gifted American in an interview with the Hamburger Abendblatt in 2005 . Marston then returned to the United States, where he studied political science at the University of Chicago . This was followed by a film degree at New York University (NYU), which he completed in 1998 with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA). He then made a living teaching English as a second language and later working as a film editor .

In 1999 Marston realized his first short film Bus to Queens with the help of a film loan of 11,000 US dollars , for which he also wrote the script. Inspired by a trip through Vietnam , the film focuses on a Russian couple who get lost in New Jersey and only find their way back to their home in Queens with the help of two Pakistani people . With the Bus to Queens , filmed in Russian, English and Punjabi , Marston wanted to show the "particularly detrimental treatment of immigrants" and how "real misjudgments can lead to fear and mistrust" . The student work earned him first recognition at domestic film festivals and several awards, including the " Warner Brothers Film Award" and the "Martin Segal Film Award" from the New York Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts .

Success as a feature film director

After Bus to Queens , Marston began working on his first feature film. He originally planned to make an independent film under the title Grasslands . This was supposed to report on the family of a marijuana planter from the Midwest who tried to assert himself in the drug war. Marston kept the subject of drug-related crime, but dropped the script in favor of the Spanish-language production Maria voll der Gnade (2004), which was made with the support of the US television channel HBO . The drama focuses on a 17-year-old Colombian woman who smuggles drugs into New York for a drug cartel in order to escape the depressing living conditions in her homeland.

In 1999, through a newspaper article and conversations with Colombian migrants in his hometown of Queens, Marston became aware of the fate of the so-called "mules" ( Spanish mula ) who carry the heroin sachets in their stomachs to the United States. He conducted interviews with imprisoned drug couriers and also visited South America for research. “[I traveled] ... a little like an anthropologist, interviewing people. It was a great journey of discovery that didn’t stop with the research, but continued during rehearsals, filming and even while editing, ” says Marston. During the shooting of the film, which had to take place in neighboring Ecuador due to the unrest in the run-up to the Colombian presidential elections , he trusted the Colombian Catalina Sandino Moreno . The amateur actress was selected from over 800 candidates after a month-long search in the USA and Colombia. Like his role models Ken Loach , Mike Leigh , Héctor Babenco and Erick Zonca, Marston saw himself as a realistic filmmaker and “observer” . He improvised with the actors and had large parts of the action recorded with the handheld camera.

Mary full of grace was a great success with critics and received 30 international film and festival awards. Marston received the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival , the Alfred Bauer Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2004, and was named best debut director and screenwriter by the New York Film Critics Circle , the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Independent Spirit Awards excellent. Leading actress Catalina Sandino Moreno won a Silver Bear for Best Actress and earned an Oscar nomination. The German film service praised Marston as a director in the tradition of the great neorealists , who had the courage to "leave crucial questions about the future of his characters unanswered and to ignore moral judgments" . Despite all her realism, Maria is full of grace "neither a documentary nor a political theses film" , but "a very personal story filmed from the perspective of the 17-year-old main character" .

After his successful feature film debut, Marston considered dramatizing the fate of American truck drivers and civilian employees in Iraq in 2005 . The project with Warner Independent Pictures was never realized. Marston then took over the direction of individual episodes of various American television series (including Six Feet Under - Always Death , Law & Order , In Treatment - The Therapist ), while he contributed Brighton Rock to the episode film New York, I Love You in 2009 . In it, Cloris Leachman and Eli Wallach played an old, argumentative couple who were spending their 63rd wedding anniversary on Coney Island .

It was not until 2011 that Marston presented his second feature film, The Forgiveness of Blood , which was again invited to compete for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival , where it received the Silver Bear for best screenplay. The American states that he likes to immerse himself in milieus that are not his own ( "... like a fly on a wall ..." ). The international co-production tells the story of two young siblings (Tristan Halilaj and Rudina Sindi Laçej), whose Albanian family becomes involved in a dispute over land ownership. While the sister has to take over the work from the father who has been accused of murder, the brother is no longer allowed to leave the house for fear of blood revenge . As with Mary full of grace , Marston researched the subject of blood revenge in Albania and shot his film in the original locations and in the original language. According to their own account, more than 3,000 schoolchildren auditioned for roles that in The Forgiveness of Blood were mostly cast by amateur actors.

Joshua Marston lives in New York. He is fluent in Spanish, French, Italian and Czech.

Filmography (selection)

Director

  • 1998: Bus to Queens (short film)
  • 2001: Voice of an Angel (short film)
  • 2002: Trifecta (short film)
  • 2004: Maria Full of Grace ( Maria Full of Grace / Maria, llena eres de gracia )
  • 2008: Bitter Memories (short film)
  • 2009: New York, I Love You (episode film, Brighton Beach segment )
  • 2011: The Forgiveness of Blood
  • 2016: Complete Unknown You Are Who You Pretend To Be (Complete Unknown)
  • 2018: Come Sunday

Screenwriter

  • 1998: Bus to Queens (short film)
  • 2004: Maria Full of Grace ( Maria Full of Grace or Maria, llena eres de gracia )
  • 2009: New York, I Love You ( Brighton Beach segment )
  • 2011: The Forgiveness of Blood

Awards

  • 1998: Warner Brothers Film Award for Bus to Queens
  • 1998: Martin Segal Film Award from the New York Lincoln Center for Bus to Queens
  • 1999: Awards at the Canyonlands Film Festival for Bus to Queens (categories: Best Film, Best Drama and Best Student Film)
  • 1999: Awards at the Nashville Film Festival for Bus to Queens (Best Student Film)
  • 2004: Audience Award of the Sundance Film Festival for Maria Full of Grace
  • 2004: Alfred Bauer Prize of the Berlin International Film Festival for Maria full of grace
  • 2004: New Generation Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association for Mary of Grace (together with Catalina Sandino Moreno)
  • 2004: New York Film Critics Circle Award for Mary of Grace (Best First Feature)
  • 2004: Jury Prize of the Newport International Film Festival for Mary of Grace (Best Film)
  • 2004: Los Angeles IFP / West Film Festival Audience Award for Mary of Grace
  • 2004: Special prize of the jury of the Festival Internacional de Cine de Cartagena for Mary full of grace
  • 2004: Awards at the American Film Festival in Deauville for Mary of Grace (Special Grand Prize, Critic Prize, Audience Prize)
  • 2004: International Jury Prize of the São Paulo International Film Festival for Mary full of grace
  • 2004: Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Mary of Grace (Best First Feature)
  • 2005: Silver Eagle of the Asociación de Críticos Cinematográficos de Argentina for Mary full of grace (Best foreign film in Spanish)
  • 2004: Gotham Award for Mary of Grace (Breakthrough Director Award)
  • 2005: Russell Smith Award from the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association for Mary of Grace
  • 2005: Independent Spirit Award for Maria voll der Gnade (Best First Screenplay)
  • 2011: Silver Bear (Best Screenplay) for The Forgiveness of Blood (together with Andamion Murataj )
  • 2011: Screenplay Award of the Chicago International Film Festival for The Forgiveness of Blood (together with Andamion Murataj)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b cf. Data sheet (PDF; 172 kB) on Mary full of grace at berlinale.de, 2004 (accessed on February 9, 2011)
  2. ↑ cf. AFP : "Maria llena de gracia", Gran Premio del festival de cine de Deauville en Francia . September 12, 2004, 6:55 PM GMT (accessed via LexisNexis Economy )
  3. ↑ a b c cf. Gallagher, Steve: 25 New Faces of Independent Film 2002 - Joshua Marston ( Memento of the original from April 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at filmmakermagazine.com (accessed February 10, 2011)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.filmmakermagazine.com
  4. ↑ a b c d e cf. Pinsker, Beth: Joshua Marston . In: Daily Variety , January 14, 2004, p. B4
  5. ↑ a b c cf. Movie Q&A Joshua Marston . In: Time Out, March 23, 2005, p. 72
  6. ↑ a b cf. Rothe, Marcus: "Giving people a voice" . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , April 21, 2005, No. 92/2005, p. 8
  7. ↑ cf. Rohter, Larry: The Drug Trade's Entry-Level Employees . In: The New York Times , July 11, 2004, Section 2, Arts and Leisure Desk, p. 9
  8. ↑ a b c cf. Hernandez, Eugene: First Aperture Grant Film, "Bus to Queens", to Screen Tonight on indiewire.com, April 30, 1998 (accessed February 10, 2011)
  9. ↑ cf. Baudin, Brigitte: Joshua Marston: marche ou crève . In: Le Figaro , December 8, 2004, p. 26
  10. ↑ cf. Nord, Christina: "Facts are often much more interesting" . In: the daily newspaper , April 23, 2005, p. 21
  11. ↑ a b cf. Critique by Franz Everschor in film-dienst 8/2005 (accessed via Munzinger Online )
  12. ↑ cf. Uneasy money: Full of Grace director turns to Iraq at guardian.co.uk, April 14, 2005 (accessed February 9, 2011)
  13. ↑ cf. Brooks, Brian; Renninger, Bryce: In the Works: Marston in Albania, Pixelated Feature, Club Closure, Desaparecido & Popcorn Ice Cream at indiewire.com, June 17, 2010 (accessed February 10, 2011)
  14. ↑ cf. Data sheet (PDF; 163 kB) for The Forgiveness of Blood at berlinale.de, 2010 (accessed on February 9, 2011)
personal data
SURNAME Marston, Joshua
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Marston, Joshua Jacob (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Los Angeles County , California