Interview: Cinematographer Darius Khondji on Shooting on Film and Finding the Light and the Darkness of ‘Marty Supreme’
For legendary cinematographer Darius Khondji, Marty Supreme took him back to a version of New York City from his past. Born in Tehran, Iran, Khondji’s family later immigrated to France, where he spent most of his childhood, catching the moviemaking bug when he started making his own Super-8 films. In the ‘70s, Khondji studied film at New York University and at the International Center of Photography in Marty Mauser’s stomping grounds on the Lower East Side. Living in the city gave him a unique perspective, inspiring his approach to lighting and capturing the faces of his characters.
Throughout Khondji’s storied career he’s crafted some of cinema history’s most iconic images, collaborating with filmmakers like David Fincher (Se7en, Panic Room), Michael Haneke (Amour), James Gray (The Immigrant), Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris, To Rome With Love), Bong Joon-ho (Okja, Mickey 17), and Wong Kar-wai (My Blueberry Nights). He’s also been nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on Alan Parker’s movie musical Evita with Madonna and most recently, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s semi-autobiographical film, Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. In addition to working with some of the industry’s veterans, Khondji now finds himself collaborating with a new crop of filmmakers eager to make their mark, including Ari Aster (Eddington) and, of course, The Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems). Naturally, he was the perfect choice for Josh Safdie’s solo venture, Marty Supreme.
In Marty Supreme, Khondji displays some of the most exciting work in his career, blending his brilliant ability to light a scene and his skill for capturing dynamic movement found throughout his collaborations on music videos. As I discussed Safdie’s thrilling ping pong odyssey with Khondji, he mentioned The Godfather as a key cinematic reference point. Across the 1970s, cinematographer Gordon Willis’ ability to create mood with the use of shadows earned him the nickname, “The Prince of Darkness.” In reflecting on Khondji’s work in Marty Supreme and my conversation with the cinematographer, I can’t help but feel that Willis has a modern successor.
This interview contains spoilers for Marty Supreme.
Sophia Ciminello: Marty Supreme is such a sprawling odyssey of a movie where we’re going all over the world to so many different locations, yet the look feels so consistent and true to Marty’s story. How did you and Josh determine the visual language?
Darius Khondji: I think we determined it really in preparation. When I read the script, it was just amazing. Normally, I don’t read scripts so easily and so quickly, but I was very excited, and I called him and Ronnie Bronstein right away. The first discussion I had with Josh was about the character Marty and who he was, and about the period and 1952. I wanted it to be scrupulously rendered, like how a movie like The Godfather could be very very true to the feeling of the period. Or Barry Lyndon, not in terms of the beauty of the photography, but more about the preciseness of the period being very true without compromising the realness of the period. And when Jack [Fisk] came on board and was with us, he became fantastic for that. And then Josh sent me that incredible playlist of music and the soundtrack he wanted to use. And to make me understand that, however true we were to the period, physically, visually, painterly, it was on Marty himself as this young man. He was going to be like a flow of music that was going to be very different than the visuals you would see, but he would be very true to what he has in himself. It was a very interesting concept. And so that was the first element and the first discussion that triggered the creation of Marty together.
SC: It’s so funny that you mentioned Barry Lyndon, because I really thought a lot about that movie when I was watching this.
DK: Wow, really?
SC: I think there’s so much in Marty as a character and how he moves through his own period in history that reminded me a lot of how we see Barry Lyndon.
DK: That’s so interesting. It made me very happy that you saw that in this film, Sophia.
SC: It’s really stayed with me. Both movies also feel really inventive in how they use light. In the ping pong scenes, you play with darkness in a really beautiful way, and we don’t have that harshness of the fluorescent lights that we’re used to in those spaces today. How did light these scenes?
DK: The thing with the light is that I always think of what I call “poor light” in that period. In 1952, they didn’t have very bright lights. Everything was not lit in the way cities are today. When you walk around, everything is lit at night like crazy. I remember even when I was a kid and a young filmmaker, when I wanted to study film in New York, it was very moody and very dark, and there were pools of light. I remember all of the images I have of the ‘30s or ‘40s, or ‘50s where the light was necessary in some areas and the rest didn’t have it. You couldn’t light everywhere. So, I was calling it poor light in my head, meaning there was light only where it was necessary to have it. And for the ping pong, I imagined that the light should be really true to what it was at the time. What we saw in the newsreels and the photographs of the period was the way the tables were lit with this old Tungsten light that doesn’t exist much anymore. So, we had a wonderful gaffer who came to do the film with us, and he showed me those 500 mushroom lights. We did tests with different lights for Marty for the ping pong scenes, and I felt that these were the most beautiful and true to the faces of the actors, and more painterly. And I refer to this painter I love called George Bellows, because it reminds me almost of a boxing ring. It’s almost like the boxer performing under this kind of Tungsten light coming down on them. This was the base and what the first brushstroke of Marty was going to be, and we started to go from there. And we always imagined that the streets would be lit from the inside. Shops were lighting the outside on the street. I’d seen some images from Martin Lewis and remembered some of his paintings and drawings.
SC: And in those ping pong scenes, it’s pretty thrilling in how you capture the back and forth. What cameras and lenses did you use to create that tension?
DK: We used multiple cameras there. We didn’t want to shoot it in a commercial style, but we wanted to shoot it in a very classic way, like how movies would have been shot in the older days of shooting a sport. So we shot the film in CinemaScope with a very long lens, but we shot at the height of the actors a lot of the time. And we shot it to be very diametrically opposed, where there were cameras shooting 90 degrees at different sides. We shot with three cameras most of the time for the ping pong and we’d be frontal or to the side, but in a very designed, classic way. We wanted it to be lit and shot like that. So the light was just coming down and falling off on the people and they would stay in a more subdued light. Even when Gwyneth arrives in the hall, she’s in a more subdued light. And the only really bright light was on the ping pong tables.
SC: And can you talk about the decision to shoot on film?
DK: Yeah, of course. So, most of the film is shot on film, and a few scenes are shot digitally. But most of the film is shot on film, because Josh loves it. For Uncut Gems, we shot anamorphic, and before we shot together, he was already shooting a Super 35 or 16-millimeter on film. And I have to say that on Marty, more than Uncut Gems, it really gave me a pleasure of shooting on film that I haven’t had for a long time. It’s the fact that we’re so close to the actors all the time, and we get to see all of these faces in the way that I do with film, because I did film for most of my life until digital came along. What I love about film is that I’m able to push the negative in different situations and different ways to increase the grain and increase the texture a little bit. And so it makes it much more painterly and much more interesting to shoot on film than digital.
SC: You mentioning the characters’ faces and those close-ups makes me think of how powerful the ending of the movie is, where you hold the camera on Marty’s face. What were you and Josh hoping to convey in that final moment?
DK: We really just wanted to observe him. You know, we were in this hospital where the baby is born, and we just wanted to observe him, so we shot this almost like a documentary. We put the camera with the long lens on him again, but we almost wanted to erase ourselves and not be there physically, to shoot it more remotely, you know? We photographed Marty for this close-up, and we were totally silent. There was almost no one around the camera, and it was just him with his baby.
SC: It’s such a great way to end the film.
DK: It’s a great moment, yeah.
SC: Thank you so much, Darius. It was lovely speaking with you today.
DK: Thank you, Sophia. Thank you very much.
Marty Supreme is currently in limited release from A24 and will go wide on December 25.
- Interview: Cinematographer Darius Khondji on Shooting on Film and Finding the Light and the Darkness of ‘Marty Supreme’ - December 23, 2025
- Interview: ‘Marty Supreme’ Casting Director Jennifer Venditti on Finding 1950s Faces and the Magic of Collaborating with Josh Safdie - December 22, 2025
- Interview: Cinematographer Łukasz Żal on Creating Death’s Point of View and the Magical Realism of ‘Hamnet’ - December 9, 2025
Interview: Cinematographer Darius Khondji on Shooting on Film and Finding the Light and the Darkness of ‘Marty Supreme’ 
Writer/Director Charlie Polinger Tackles Teenage Boy Body Horror in his Debut Feature ‘The Plague’ [VIDEO INTERVIEW] 
‘The Testament of Ann Lee’ Review: Amanda Seyfried is Mother (Ann) in Mona Fastvold’s Miraculous Musical Drama [A] 
With ‘Song Sung Blue,’ Craig Brewer Pays Tribute to Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman, Joy Amongst Sadness, and the Creation of Art [VIDEO INTERVIEW]