An Interview with Writer/Director/Producer Penelope Lawson
We chat with Penelope Lawson about her short film, The Dinner Party, her experience founding her own production company, and fun cinema.

During an environmental catastrophe Nikolai is desperately trying to preserve humanistic values in the largest refugee camp in front of the reinforced border.
We chat with Penelope Lawson about her short film, The Dinner Party, her experience founding her own production company, and fun cinema.
A complex, realistic, and loving mother-daughter relationship is at the heart of this story about Black pageants and the fight for a better future.
From its visually stunning opening credits, which show women dancing through a forest to musical rhythms that sound almost primal, to its quiet, heartbreaking final frame, Mona Fastvold’s historical rendering of the Shaker religious movement is an experience that will stay with me for a long time.
This short film was an overall creative success.
The differences in these films could not be more blatant, and yet Gus Van Sant has found a way to portray the same messages and use the same techniques in each.
Emma Stone (Estella and Cruella) and Emma Thompson (the Baroness) did not come to play around in Cruella. They embodied the perfect balance of sinister and sincere. Estella went through a great hero's journey, and what a journey it was!