"Filmmaker Magazine" Names FSU Grad New Face of Independent Film

Filmmaker Magazine just named Florida State alumnus, Nat Sanders, one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Past recipients of this recognition include filmmaker Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow), actress Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry), and writer/director, and fellow Florida State alumnus, Barry Jenkins, whose film Medicine for Melancholy Sanders edited last year.

Barry Jenkins (BFA 2003) and Nat Sanders (BFA 2002)

Filmmaker’s Editor-in-Chief Scott Macaulay says of this year’s new faces that the list “consists, as always, of new film artists whose work we feel passionately about but also, in this year of change, people who are redefining the notion of a career in film.”

Sanders, who graduated from Florida State in 2002, was working in Hollywood, editing a reality television show, when Jenkins summoned him to San Francisco to edit Medicine for Melancholy. He immediately quit his job and went right to work on Jenkins’ film. The gamble paid off, because when Medicine for Melancholy screened at the South by Southwest festival in Austin last year, director Lynn Shelton was taken with his work and asked him to move to Seattle and edit her film, Humpday.

To top it off, Sanders’ first two feature films garnered enormous critical acclaim. Humpday, which opened in theaters last week, won a Special Jury Prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Last spring, Medicine for Melancholy was nominated for a Gotham Award and three Independent Spirit Awards–including Best First Feature–and was released in theaters and on-demand by IFC.

Currently, Sanders is cutting The Freebie, the directorial debut of Kathryn Aselton, co-star of The Puffy Chair and wife of Humpday star Mark Duplass. "I guess I'm greedy,” said Sanders, “because I just want my friends and I to keep making films on a bigger and bigger scale, with all the stories being humanistic, meaningful and important and told in fresh and real ways."