This episode of the podcast explores prison films, with a special focus on Swedish filmmaker Mai Zetterling’s lesser-known drama Scrubbers from 1982.
Scrubbers stars Chrissie Cotterill as Annetta, a young mother serving a prison sentence at a female borstal. The film features many familiar faces, including Kathy Burke and Eva Mottley as Annetta’s fellow prisoners as well as Miriam Margoyles, Pam St Clement and Robbie Coltrane as prison staff.
Joining host Dr Pasquale Iannone to discuss Scrubbers and the prison film more generally is Dr Jamie Bennett. Jamie is Research Associate at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Criminology and an internationally-renowned scholar of media representations of prison. He has worked in prisons for three decades in a variety of senior positions and is currently group director for contracted prisons in HM Prison & Probation Service. Jamie has held the position of Governor at various prisons, including HMP Morton Hall in Lincolnshire which, at the time, was a women’s prison with a diverse international population.
Jamie’s recent publications include 2021’s Prisoners on Prison Films (co-authored with Victoria Knight) and Managing Prisons: Managerialism, Austerity and Moral Blindness (2024).
In a wide-ranging discussion, Jamie and Pasquale discuss the history of prison movies and TV shows - from 1930’s pre-code film The Big House to Alan Clarke’s controversial 1979 drama Scum to Jimmy McGovern’s recent BBC series Time (2021). They then look at Scrubbers in detail, exploring the film’s representation of life in a women’s prison. They draw on sources such as director Zetterling’s memoir and contemporary reviews of the film from the likes of Barbara Kruger.

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by Dr Karen Pearlman.

Karen is Associate Professor at MacQuarie University in Sydney and an internationally-renowned scholar of creative practice, distributed cognition and feminist film histories. Her many projects as editor and/or director include, most recently, her short film Breaking Plates (2024) which has screened at various festivals this year, including Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. Film historian Pamela Hutchinson has written of Breaking Plates that ‘it’s rare to see such joyful feminist revolution on screen, or such deep, loving engagement with silent film style. […]’ Karen’s books include the groundbreaking 2009 textbook Cutting Rhythms: Intuitive Film Editing, which went into its third edition this year.
Pasquale spoke to Karen down the line from Sydney to discuss her other big release of 2025, a monograph on the American independent filmmaker Shirley Clarke. Like Karen, Clarke was a dancer, editor and filmmaker. She was active between the early 1950s and mid-80s, making several influential shorts as well as four daring, often controversial features on the African-American experience including The Connection (1961), The Cool World (1963), Portrait of Jason (1967) and Ornette in America (1985). Karen tells Pasquale about her approach to Clarke’s work and how it challenges and critiques traditional notions of film authorship. Clarke's work is placed in context, and the discussion also explores Clarke's links to her filmmaking contemporaries Jonas Mekas and Maya Deren.
Karen and Pasquale then discuss some of Clarke’s features, including a title which is now acknowledged as a landmark of LGBTQ+ cinema and which was once described by legendary Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman as ‘the most extraordinary film I’ve seen in my life.’
Shirley Clarke (2025) by Karen Pearlman is published by Edinburgh University Press and is part of the series Visionaries: The Work of Women Filmmakers (Series editors Lucy Bolton and Richard Rushton).

In this episode, host Dr Pasquale Iannone explores some highlights from the 78th Edinburgh International Film Festival which took place in August 2025.

Writer-director Mas Bouzidi tells Pasquale about his debut feature Concessions, a bittersweet comedy shot on 16mm which tells of the final day of business of a New York cinema.

Pasquale is also joined by writer-director Gerard Johnson and lead actor Polly Maberly to discuss their powerful new thriller Odyssey. Maberly delivers an extraordinary performance as a take-no-prisoners, drug-addled London lettings agent whose firm is going through hard times but is determined to keep up appearances, even if it means sliding further and further into debt.

Pasquale also discusses EIFF titles Young Mothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) and Dragonfly (Paul Andrew Williams)

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by writer, critic and academic Hannah McGill to discuss Poetic Realism, a 1930s trend in French cinema which combined the earthy and the ethereal to often mesmerising effect.  

Whether shot in real locations or on large-scale sets, whether set in France or elsewhere around the globe, these early sound pictures are moody and melancholy. They’re fatalistic tales of immigrant labourers, train workers, tugboat captains, petty criminals, deserters, gangsters.

Directors who made films in this style included Marcel Carné, Julien Duvivier and the three Jeans - Renoir, Vigo and Grémillon.

Hannah and Pasquale discuss the socio-political backdrop, some of the major films, directors and actors as well as the trend's influence on Italian neorealism and American film noir. 

Films discussed include L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934), Toni (Jean Renoir, 1934), La grande illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937), La bête humaine (Jean Renoir, 1938), Le quai des brumes (Marcel Carné, 1938), Le jour se lève (Marcel Carné, 1939) and many more.

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone sits down with Scottish writer-director (and University of Edinburgh alumnus) John Maclean to talk about his second feature Tornado (2025). The film had its world premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival in February and went on general release in the UK in mid-June.
Set in late 18th century Scotland, Maclean's film tells of a young Japanese woman (Kōki) who makes a living performing Samurai puppet shows with her father Fujin (Takehiro Hira). One day, their paths cross with a rag-tag group of criminals led by the ruthless, stone-faced Sugarman (Tim Roth) and his son Little Sugar (Jack Lowden). Events then take a more sinister turn.
Beautifully shot in widescreen by John’s regular collaborator Robbie Ryan, Tornado is lean, muscular filmmaking - a heady, inventive Scottish take on the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa and the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone.
John tells Pasquale about his entry into filmmaking via the lo-fi music videos he made for The Beta Band, the group he co-founded in the 1990s. He also discusses his influences, his preference for storyboarding, his approach to casting, music and much more.

This mini episode of the podcast marks the re-opening of Filmhouse, Edinburgh’s beloved independent cinema which was forced to close in October 2022 when its parent company went into administration. After the closure, a crowdfunding campaign was set up and support also came in from the Scottish and UK governments. The campaign to re-open Filmhouse as a brand-new organisation was spearheaded by four former Filmhouse employees Ginnie Atkinson, David Boyd, James Rice and Rod White.
In November 2023, David and Rod joined host Dr Pasquale Iannone on a special episode of Edinburgh Film Podcast (EFP 39) where they spoke of their long associations with the cinema and their plans for the re-opening. At that time, there was a certain amount of optimism, but the re-opening was by no means a done deal. This week - more than 30 months after Filmhouse closed - the doors have finally re-opened.
In this episode, Pasquale catches up with Programme Director Rod White - they discuss the new screens (including a brand-new fourth screen), the revamped cafe bar as well as the opening programme of films.

The focus of this 60th episode of Edinburgh Film Podcast is Wanda, the only feature film directed by American actor-filmmaker Barbara Loden.

Released in 1970, the film is set in rural Pennsylvania and tells of a working class woman (Loden) who leaves her husband and young children for a life on the road. She eventually drifts into a fraught, uneasy relationship with petty thief Norman Dennis (Michael Higgins) as he plans a bank robbery.

Joining host Dr Pasquale Iannone to talk about Wanda is Dr Elena Gorfinkel, author of a new book on the film which is part of the long-running BFI Film Classics series. Elena is Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London. Specialising in underground and independent cinema, her many publications include the 2017 volume Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s. Her articles and book chapters include pieces on filmmakers such as Andy Warhol, Doris Wishman, Kira Muratova and Kelly Reichardt. Elena is also the curator of a major season currently running at London’s BFI Southbank titled Wanda and Beyond: The World of Barbara Loden.

In their detailed, wide-ranging conversation, Elena tells Pasquale about her first encounter with Wanda and how she approached the writing of her new book. Discussion then moves on to the film itself, before turning to the curation process for the BFI Loden season.

Wanda (2025) is published by Bloomsbury and is out now. The BFI Southbank season Wanda and Beyond: The World of Barbara Loden runs throughout the month of June. For more details, please see the BFI website.

On this episode, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by award-winning writer, critic and broadcaster Ellen E. Jones. Ellen presents BBC Radio 4’s Screenshot with Mark Kermode and has written for The Guardian, The Observer, Little White Lies, Empire and many other outlets. In March this year, Ellen won the Broadcasting Press Guild Award for Best Radio Presenter for her work on Screenshot.
Ellen joins Pasquale to talk about her book Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save The World which came out in paperback via Faber in February. It’s a brilliantly sharp, impassioned and entertaining look at film and TV’s role in both constructing racial identities and combating racism.

Works discussed include No Way Out (1950), Imitation of Life (1959), Get Out (2017), Black Panther (2018), Bridgerton (2020-), Atlanta (2016 - 2022), I May Destroy You (2020), Small Axe (2020) and Hard Truths (2024).

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by MSc Film Studies student Lauren Thompson to discuss one of the most critically acclaimed and influential films of all time. Andrei Tarkovsky’s fourth feature Mirror (1975) weaves together moments in the life of dying poet in a bold, non-linear style. It’s a deeply personal cinematic poem about memory, history and family, and 2025 marks its 50th anniversary.
Lauren and Pasquale begin by offering their thoughts on Tarkovsky's work more broadly and then they turn to an extended discussion of Mirror, covering elements such as the use of editing and voiceover. The discussion rounds off with a consideration of the film's influence on successive generations of filmmakers, from Christopher Nolan to Claire Denis.

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone explores the little-known early films of one of the most influential filmmakers of all time, German director Douglas Sirk.

Sirk is synonymous with one particular genre. His most famous films, such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956) and Imitation of Life (1959) are glossy, luxurious Technicolor melodramas which would go on to inspire the likes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Todd Haynes and many others.

But there is more to Sirk than melodrama - he made war films, crime movies, historical dramas and comedies in a career spanning over 25 years and several countries.

Earlier this year, Eureka Entertainment released a box set titled Sirk in Germany (1934 - 1935), a collection which takes us all the way back to the beginning of Sirk’s film career.

The set includes beautiful restorations of his first three features as well as several short films, all of which were made in the early years of the Nazi regime.

Alongside bonus material from noted film historians Sheldon Hall and Tim Bergfelder, there are three audio commentaries from the University of Edinburgh’s very own David Melville Wingrove.

David is a Teaching Fellow at the University’s Centre for Open Learning where he teaches hugely popular courses on both film and literature, specialising in dark and fantastical themes and styles. He is also a prolific writer, regularly contributing to publications such as Senses of Cinema.

David and Pasquale discuss Sirk’s first short film Two Greyhounds (1934) and his first feature April! April! (1935), both light comedies centring on mistaken identity which skewer - mostly with affection - the mores of the German middle class.

David helps to place the films in historical context and he also tells Pasquale why Sirk, who was very much one of the leading lights of the German theatre in the late 20s and early 30s, decided to make the move into filmmaking.