Samantha Buck and Marie Schlingmann are film writers and directors who have made five films together. Buck is also an actress and has directed the documentary '' Best Kept Secret'' solo. They are best known for the 2019 film '' Sister Aimee''.

Personal life and education

Buck and Schlingmann are married, having met at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. Both have a Master of Fine Arts in film from Columbia, and it is in this program that they created their first short films together. The pair have won various grants for female directors. Schlingmann is from

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

, and though she is German, she writes screenplays in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, saying that her "creative brain" is in this language.

Career

In her acting career, Buck played Det. G. Lynn Bishop in ''

Law & Order: Criminal Intent ''Law & Order: Criminal Intent'' is an American police procedural Drama (film and television), drama television series set in New York City, where it was also primarily produced. Created and Executive producer#Motion pictures and television, p ...

'' and Amy on the comedy series '' Stella''. She became interested in film production when starring on ''Big Apple''; the showrunner made the cast take writing workshops and encouraged her talents. She explained that it took her several years after this to follow through, because at the time there were very few actresses who had made the transition to behind the camera. She did not begin with writing, but took up documentary in the

cinéma vérité Cinéma vérité (, , ; "truthful cinema") is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or ...

style where she was "basically writing in the edit room with 100 hours of footage". In 2013 she directed the

Gotham Award The Gotham Awards () are American film awards, presented annually to the makers of independent films at a ceremony in New York City, the city first nicknamed "Gotham" by native son Washington Irving, in an issue of ''Salmagundi'', published on ...

-nominated and Peabody Award-winning documentary film '' Best Kept Secret''. During the production of ''Best Kept Secret'', Buck applied and was accepted to Columbia's film program. The couple first made films together at Columbia University, directing two award-winning short films: ''Canary'' and ''The Mink Catcher''. The latter of these was shown at both

Telluride Film Festival The Telluride Film Festival (TFF) is a film festival held annually in Telluride, Colorado during Labor Day weekend (the first Monday in September). The 49th edition took place on September 2 -6, 2022. History First held on 30 August 1974, t ...

and South by Southwest. Their first feature film as a duo was slated to be an adaptation of the

young adult novel Young adult fiction (YA) is a category of fiction written for readers from 12 to 18 years of age. While the genre is primarily targeted at adolescents, approximately half of YA readers are adults. The subject matter and genres of YA correlate ...

''Need'' in 2016, as a thriller financed by Covert Media. This year they also began development of the feature film ''The Big D'', something which they were still developing in 2019. Both ''The Mink Catcher'' and ''The Big D'' are set in

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

. Their breakthrough feature came a few years later in 2019's '' Sister Aimee'', which is loosely based on the story of Aimee Semple McPherson. ''Sister Aimee'' screened at Sundance Film Festival in 2019, and is planned to have a theatrical run and

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of ...

release in 2020.

Production filmography

Buck acting filmography

Film

Television

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Buck, Schlingmann, Samantha, Marie Filmmaking duos Living people 1974 births People from Dallas VJs (media personalities)