Thirty-three features. Fourteen Academy Award nominations. Steven Soderbergh has well and truly earned his reputation as one of Hollywood’s hardest-working filmmakers.
“I just don’t think movies matter as much anymore.”
It’s hard to believe these were the words spoken by one of Hollywood’s most prolific filmmakers, Steven Soderbergh, before ‘retiring’ from the industry in 2013. At this point, he’d not only cemented his reputation as a pioneer of indie cinema but amassed crossover success in the Hollywood mainstream. At just 26 years old, Soderbergh won the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes for his debut Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) and nabbed his first Academy Award nomination. He went on to (very importantly) transition George Clooney from TV to film with the action-comedy Out of Sight (1998) and beloved heist-comedy Ocean’s Eleven (2001) before becoming the second director in history to land simultaneous Best Director Oscar nominations for Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000), the latter of which he won. Never one to slow down, Soderbergh then directed seventeen films in thirteen years, including the hit Magic Mike trilogy, before calling it curtains with Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra (2013).
With his newfound spare time, Soderbergh took up painting and declared his intentions to explore the artform full-time, but a mere two months into his ‘retirement’, he received the script for medical drama The Knick (2014-2015) and found himself drawn back in. Years later, and with twenty episodes of TV under his belt, he had reinvigorated his love for the craft and redirected his dissatisfaction toward mainstream Hollywood.
Throughout his career, Soderbergh had intermittently experimented with the conventions of traditional filmmaking. On various projects he regularly cast non-actors in leading roles; withheld what scenes would and wouldn’t appear in the final cut of a film from his actors; improvised heavily on set and, on occasion, only provided snippets of a script the day of shooting. So, when Soderbergh returned in 2017 with Logan Lucky, the seemingly conventional caper-comedy was used as an experiment to attempt a new model of distribution. Before production had begun, he sold all the film’s rights, bar its theatrical run, to independent investors to finance the movie without any Hollywood studios. He followed this test by shooting his next two films, the psychological-horror Unsane (2018) and basketball drama High Flying Bird (2019), on an iPhone, before filming the introspective character study Let Them All Talk (2020) onboard the RMS Queen Mary 2 as it sailed across the Atlantic Ocean.
With the release of ghost-story PRESENCE in February and spy-thriller BLACK BAG this March, 2025 sees Soderbergh continue a familiar trend of dropping multiple films in quick succession. In PRESENCE, the idea of a traditional haunted house story is flipped on its head. Shot entirely from the point of view of an entity, a family becomes convinced that they’re not alone after they relocate to escape a tragedy. His second feature for the year, BLACK BAG, a stylish espionage thriller, finds Soderbergh returning to a genre he’s exemplified throughout his career. When intelligence agent Kathryn Woodhouse (Cate Blanchett) is suspected of betraying the nation, her husband George (Michael Fassbender), another legendary agent, is tasked with stopping her at all costs. As their professions begin to bleed into their personal lives, both parties must face the ultimate test and question their allegiance – to each other, and to their country.
Written by Matthew Braida for NovaDose March/April.
PRESCENCE and BLACK BAG are now showing at Cinema Nova.
