Jeff Nichols is not only one of cinema’s foremost chroniclers of the American South, but is doing his damnedest to revitalize the film scene in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. When he brought his acclaimed film “Loving” — about the landmark Loving v. Virginia case that legalized interracial marriage nationwide — to Little Rock back in 2016, he surveyed the scene and didn’t like what he saw.
So, over drinks with his former high school classmate Kathryn Tucker, they hatched a plan to start the Arkansas Cinema Society and its film festival Filmland in order to foster a film community in Arkansas. Nichols was inspired by what Richard Linklater had accomplished with the Austin Film Society and its impact on the local film scene in Austin, Texas, where Nichols resides. But landing an internship with The American Pavilion during Cannes made being a filmmaker seem possible.
The 2026 edition of Filmland, which ran Aug. 12-16, saw a number of actors and filmmakers descend upon Little Rock, including Matthew McConaughey, the star of Nichols’ riveting film “Mud,” which helped kick-start what came to be known as the McConaissance. McConaughey was on hand to screen his latest film “The Rivals of Amziah King,” participate in a career-spanning conversation with Nichols and receive Variety’s Legend & Groundbreaker Award. Variety sat down with Nichols — the man behind films such as “Take Shelter,” “Midnight Special” and “The Bikeriders” — to discuss the unfortunate state of independent film production in America and the rumors swirling around Margaret Qualley and Drew Starkey, the stars of his upcoming thriller “King Snake,” out next year.
Nearly impossible, and especially independent film. We scouted Vancouver just out of necessity. Studios negotiate contracts with these guilds and unions, and I suppose when they make agreements that they don’t ultimately want to pay for the results of they take production elsewhere.
I’ve been in Georgia, and from what I’ve heard it’s been a pretty devastating blow with Disney taking everything to London; the work there has been challenging since this last round of strikes and everything else. The thing is, American independent filmmakers do have to abide by those contracts — and they weren’t built for us. We really need to look, as an industry, at independent film production — what it provides, what it costs — and we need more flexibility in those contracts, and more flexibility from our unions and our guilds in order to make things at different price points so that as independent film producers we have a fighting chance to keep things in the U.S.
The truth is, as state-based subsidies continue to change and move, that’s not enough. We have to find ways to have independent film producers stay in the United States, and it’s a massive challenge, so that in between the big studio films there’s a thriving ecosystem of film. A federal tax incentive would be a pretty fascinating thing to look at, which has been floated, that you could layer on top of state incentives.
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