LWLies 107: The Sin­ners issue – Out now!

There’s a con­fi­dence and raw pow­er to the cin­e­ma of Ryan Coogler that is aston­ish­ing in and of itself. From cre­at­ing Sun­dance head­lines in 2013 with his fea­ture debut, Fruit­vale Sta­tion, he has shift­ed seam­less­ly into the leagues of high-end fran­chise film­mak­ing (Creed, a brace of Black Pan­ther movies) with­out ever allow­ing a for­mi­da­ble per­son­al touch to become dulled or diluted. 

Sin­ners is a pas­sion project that the writer-direc­tor tells us he has want­ed to make for some time, see­ing the com­plex and pro­tract­ed shoot of Black Pan­ther: Wakan­da For­ev­er as a good excuse to make some­thing com­plete­ly orig­i­nal and ripped from the heart. Inspired by the blues tunes played by Coogler’s own uncle, Sin­ners fol­lows the twins Smoke (Michael B Jor­dan) and Stack (Michael B Jor­dan) as they return dur­ing Pro­hi­bi­tion to their home­stead of rur­al Mis­sis­sip­pi from time away in Chica­go to set up a juke joint and bring the par­ty to the people. 

How­ev­er, malev­o­lent out­side forces begin to encroach, and a bat­tle for the soul ensues. Coogler him­self has described the film as one that hops play­ful­ly between gen­res, mix­ing musi­cal, action and polit­i­cal ele­ments into a potent super­nat­ur­al base. We couldn’t help but be tick­led by the fact that, when we spoke to Coogler about the film, he was sat in front of a giant poster for John Carpenter’s The Thing, which per­haps gives a few clues as to the para­noic, philo­soph­i­cal­ly-laced thrilled that Sin­ners is.

As always, Lit­tle White Lies is a mag­a­zine focused on cel­e­brat­ing the craft of cin­e­ma and hear­ing from those who don’t often receive an equal share of the lime­light. So we were thrilled to talk to a num­ber of peo­ple whose work behind the cam­era gave so much rich­ness and depth to Coogler’s grand, IMAX-filmed vision, which is out in cin­e­mas glob­al­ly on 18 April.

On the cover

For this issue, we had to jump on the chance to have twin cov­er stars, and we’re so proud of how our inter­lock­ing dou­ble cov­ers have turned out, cre­at­ed by the Pitts­burgh-based illus­tra­tor, Noa Den­mon. The intri­cate cov­er por­traits offer lit­tle secret hints as to the char­ac­ter arcs of Smoke and Stack and the ordeal they go through, and she cap­tures the film’s tone of super­nat­ur­al dread with aplomb.

Also in the issue we have incred­i­ble new illus­tra­tion work from Olivia Twist, Iain Macarthur, Rachel Bruce, Snids, and Nick Tay­lor.

In the issue

Polit­i­cal Acts: The Cin­e­ma of Ryan Coogler
Leila Latif takes a trip from Fruit­vale Sta­tion to Sin­ners to explore the work of this main­stream radical.

Black and Blues
Kam­bole Camp­bell talks to writer/​director Ryan Coogler about his music-pow­ered, IMAX-shot thriller, Sin­ners.

Twin Cin­e­ma
Michael B Jor­dan on his deep cre­ative and per­son­al con­nec­tion to Sin­ners direc­tor, Ryan Coogler.

Roots
A look to the past and present at a rich his­to­ry of Black excel­lence in genre filmmaking.

Saints on Sin­ners
Emma Fras­er and David Jenk­ins talk shop with eight mem­bers of the cast and crew of Sin­ners.

Up Jumped the Dev­il
Jake Cole explores the abid­ing screen influ­ence and inter­est in myth­i­cal blues­man, Robert Johnson.

Immor­tal Beloved
Jour­dain Sear­les writes in praise of Bill Gunn’s sem­i­nal, exper­i­men­tal vam­pire alle­go­ry, Gan­ja and Hess.

On the Bat­walk: A Vam­pire Fash­ion Sur­vey
Soma Ghosh reports live from the cat­walks of Tran­syl­va­nia on cinema’s most plush­ly-thread­ed vamps.

In the back section

Bong Joon Ho inter­view
We chat to the Oscar-win­ner on his big return to Eng­lish-lan­guage film­mak­ing with the utter­ly goofy and charm­ing Mick­ey 17.

Joshua Oppen­heimer
Lucy Peters speaks to the writer-direc­tor of apoc­a­lyp­tic musi­cal, The End, about his shift from doc­u­men­tary over to fiction.

Gints Zil­balodis
Fresh from his Oscar win for the breath­tak­ing cat-based ani­ma­tion, Flow, the Lat­vian direc­tor explains how he made the minia­ture epic that could.

Kyoshi Kuro­sawa
Han­nah Strong sits down with the Japan­ese genre mae­stro in Tokyo to talk about a raft of recent projects, includ­ing new UK release, Cloud.

David Lynch obit­u­ary
Han­nah Strong on the influ­ence and pres­ence of the great exper­i­men­tal film­mak­er who – for a time – found a place to play with­in the system. 

Post­card: Rot­ter­dam Film Fes­ti­val
David Jenk­ins sends a mis­sive back from this Dutch fes­ti­val stal­wart that offers divine eso­ter­i­ca, but some­times a lit­tle less to write home about.

Sticky Gold Stars: In Praise of Mar­lon Rig­gs
Mari­na Ash­i­oti looks back at the rad­i­cal filmmaker’s sear­ing and melan­choly 1994 swan­song, Black Is… Black Ain’t.

In review

Bong Joon Ho’s Mick­ey 17
Kevin Mac­Don­ald and Sam Rice-Edwards’ One to One: John & Yoko
Mikko Mäkelä’s Sebas­t­ian
Louise Courvoisier’s Holy Cow
Peter Cattaneo’s The Pen­guin Lessons
Haroula Rose’s All Hap­py Fam­i­lies
Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End
Alon­so Ruizplacios’s La Coci­na
Dar­ren Thornton’s Four Moth­ers
Sasha Nathwani’s Last Swim
Manon Quimet and Jacob Perlmutter’s Two Strangers Try­ing Not to Kill Each Oth­er
Alain Guiraudie’s Mis­eri­cor­dia
Karan Kandahari’s Sis­ter Mid­night
Gintz Zil­balodis’ Flow
Uber­to Pasolini’s The Return
Steven East­wood and Neu­ro­cul­tures Collective’s The Stim­ming Pool
Sinéad O’Shea’s Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Sto­ry
Sand­hya Suri’s San­tosh
Onti Timoner’s Dig! XX
Guil­laume Cail­leau and Ben Russell’s Direct Action
Jia Zhang-ke’s Caught By the Tides
Leonar­do Van Dijl’s Julie Keeps Qui­et
Dea Kulumbegagashvili’s April
Miguel Gomes’ Grand Tour
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud

Plus Matt Turn­er and David Jenk­ins review eight excit­ing Home Ents releases.

LWLies 107 is avail­able to order now from our online shop. Join Club LWLies or sub­scribe today to make sure you nev­er miss an issue.

Cor­rec­tion: In the fea­ture Black & Blues: A Con­ver­sa­tion With Ryan Coogler on the Mak­ing of Sin­ners, we would like to high­light a tran­scrip­tion error in the print ver­sion. Where Mr Coogler says, ​“Lud­wig can’t play any instru­ment that requires breath­ing,” it should read as, ​“The only instru­ments Lud­wig can’t play are ones that require cir­cu­lar breath­ing.” This will be updat­ed in the online ver­sion of the inter­view. In the same fea­ture, the 2015 film Creed was mis­at­trib­uted as being released in 2011 – this will also be updated.