Two Alums Named ‘New Faces of Indie Film’

Filmmaker Magazine named Mariano Dongo ’17 and Heather Landsman ’24 to their 2025 list of “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”

For the piece, Filmmaker talked to Dongo about his hybrid feature/documentary, currently in production, which is shot in, uses archival footage of, and is inspired by New York’s renowned French restaurant, Balthazar.

“The hybrid film will embrace the musicality of the spot, with the intended effect of focusing on different overheard conversations across an ensemble of characters,” according to Filmmaker.

“It’s a very alive project,” Dongo explains in the article. “I wanted to make a movie that hopefully captures the new and old glory of downtown New York.”

Landsman told the publication about The Best of Me, a documentary about an obsessive fan’s failed plot to assassinate the pop star Bjork in 1996, that Landsman made while a senior at Emerson, as well as her forthcoming narrative feature, You Have Been Disconnected.

“[T]he story centers on two e-friends who reconnect within the abandoned servers of a multiplayer online game they used to play together,” Filmmaker writes. “After one of them swears they’ve stumbled upon an elusive easter egg, the line between virtual and material worlds indelibly blurs. The entire film will unfold within the confines of a computer screen. ‘No AI,’ [Landsman] firmly states. ‘It’s all being made by a team of game animators that I’ve been working with.'”