To tie-in with the 2025 Academy Awards, this episode of the podcast discusses one of the frontrunners for Best Picture, Director, Actor as well as Supporting Actor and Actress. James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown chronicles the very early years in the career of the great singer songwriter Bob Dylan and stars Timothée Chalamet in the lead role.
Joining host Dr Pasquale Iannone to talk about the film is Ricky Ross. Ricky is a singer-songwriter and frontman of Deacon Blue, the acclaimed, much-loved Scottish band formed in Glasgow almost exactly forty years ago. Alongside writing and performing, Ricky is also a Sony award-winning broadcaster. Since 2008, he has presented Another Country on BBC Radio Scotland which showcases the best in Americana old and new.
The conversation was recorded at the beginning of February 2025, with Ricky and the band gearing up for the release of their new album The Great Western Road as well a major UK tour. Ricky and Pasquale discuss the musical biopic in general before turning to Mangold’s A Complete Unknown. They explore the film’s focus on four key early years in Dylan’s career and also touch upon the Oscar-nominated performances of Chalamet as Dylan, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger. Ricky shares his thoughts on the film’s evocation of the New York folk scene and tells Pasquale what he thought of its depiction of the songwriting process.

This episode of the podcast celebrates the work of the great Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, with a special focus on one of her lesser known films, the 1986 musical Golden Eighties.
Our guide to all things Akerman is Marion Schmid. Marion is Professor of French Literature and Film at the University of Edinburgh and the author of several books and articles on Akerman, including a 2010 monograph for Manchester University Press.
Marion and Pasquale begin by discussing Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Akerman’s 1975 masterpiece which famously topped Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time poll in 2022.
Discussion then moves on to Golden Eighties, a vibrant, effervescent musical which tells of the romantic intrigues in a Brussels shopping centre and stars Jeanne Dielman herself, Delphine Seyrig.

On this episode, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by John Bleasdale. John is a writer and film critic whose work has appeared in Sight & Sound, The Guardian, Variety, The Economist and many other outlets. He’s also a prolific podcaster, with series such as Writers on Film, Cinema Italia and The James Bond Book Club.
John talks to Pasquale about his latest book The Magic Hours (2024), a fascinating biography of the acclaimed American filmmaker Terrence Malick which was recently described by New Yorker critic Richard Brody as ‘a rapturously detailed, sensitively observed, critically insightful account.’ John and Pasquale talk about what makes for a great filmmaker biography and then discuss Malick’s background, his brief but eventful stints in academia and journalism and his beginnings as a screenwriter. Also covered are his first two features as director - 1970s American classics Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) as well as the much talked about gap of two decades between Days of Heaven and his third feature, The Thin Red Line (1998). Just what was Malick up to during this time? How much truth is there in this image of Malick as the reclusive auteur?
The conversation also takes in key aspects of the Malick methodology and film style, including his work with actors, his editing approach and his use of voiceover.
The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick is out now via the University Press of Kentucky.

On the 60th anniversary of its release, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by Film Studies PhD student Sam Warnock to discuss Japanese writer-director Kobayashi Masaki's extraordinary ghost story anthology Kwaidan.
Shot entirely on studio sets in sumptuous widescreen and lavish, saturated colour, Kwaidan adapts ghost stories by author Lafcadio Hearn and is undoubtedly one of the most visually and aurally striking films of the 1960s. Kobayashi's biographer Steven Prince has described it as the director's 'most overtly and extravagantly stylized film'. 
Sam and Pasquale discuss the work of Kobayashi and Hearn more broadly as well as the remarkable contribution of composer Takemitsu Toru. They then move onto a close analysis of the four episodes themselves, discussing elements such as narrative structure, adaptation strategies, use of colour, set design as well as the film's textured soundscape.

This is the second of two episodes focusing on Film Phenomenologies, a new collection of essays from Edinburgh University Press edited by Dr Kelli Fuery (Chapman University).
Host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by Professor Lucy Bolton (Queen Mary University of London) and Dr David Sorfa (University of Edinburgh) to discuss their essays, both of which explore recent star biopics from phenomenological perspectives.
Lucy discusses her piece 'The Posthumous Phenomenology of the Star Biopic: Kristen Stewart as Jean Seberg in Seberg (2019)' while David tells Pasquale about his chapter 'The Assassination of Marilyn Monroe by the Coward Andrew Dominik' which takes a Sartrean approach to the controversial 2022 film Blonde.
While this episode is stand-alone, the previous episode features editor Kelli in conversation with Pasquale. She unpacks the concept behind the collection, provides an overview of all 13 chapters and takes a closer look at her own essay, 'The Khôra-Screen: Responsibility as a Precarious Intimacy in Agnès Varda’s One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977).

This is the first of two episodes in which host Dr Pasquale Iannone and guests discuss Film Phenomenologies, a ground-breaking collection of essays from Edinburgh University Press which explores work by filmmakers such as Céline Sciamma, Agnès Varda, Bill Viola, Alex Garland and Barry Jenkins through a phenomenological lens.
In this first episode, Pasquale is joined by the collection's editor Dr Kelli Fuery (Professor of Creative and Cultural Industries at Chapman University, California). Kelli discusses her interest in feminist film-phenomenology, provides an overview of all 13 chapters and then takes a closer look at her own piece - on Agnès Varda’s feminist musical One Sings, The Other Doesn't (1977).

The next episode of Edinburgh Film Podcast (EFP 50) includes conversations with Professor Lucy Bolton and Dr David Sorfa, who discuss their respective chapters.

In this episode, host Dr Pasquale Iannone previews the 32nd French Film Festival UK in the company of its co-founder and director Richard Mowe.

Pasquale and Richard look back at the festival's beginnings in the early 1990s before exploring the 2024 programme which includes a diverse range of titles from France, Belgium, Switzerland and beyond. New titles mentioned include Toni (Nathan Ambrosioni), Boléro (Anne Fontaine), The Marching Band (Emmanuel Courcol), One Year, One Night (Isaki Lacuesta) and Dog on Trial (Laetitia Dosch). Also discussed are the shorts and classics strands.

The French Film Festival runs across the UK in various venues throughout November an December. Full information is available on their website www.frenchfilmfestival.org.uk.

In this episode, host Dr Pasquale Iannone previews the 2024 Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival in the company of ESFF founder and director Marian A. Aréchaga and programming assistant Gustavo Herrera Taboada.
Pasquale, Marian and Gustavo discuss the background to ESFF and explore some highlights from the programme, including opening night film, futuristic thriller Artificial Justice and music documentary Soy Rebelde. There is also discussion of the festival's guests and special events.
The Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival runs between 2nd and 26th October in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, Tranent and Inverness. For more information, please go to www.edinburghspanishfilmfestival.com

In this episode, host Dr Pasquale Iannone looks back at some highlights from the 77th Edinburgh International Film Festival. Pasquale talks to writer-director Jack King about his film The Ceremony, the film that won EIFF's inaugural Sir Sean Connery Prize for Excellence in Feature Filmmaking. He also speaks to BAFTA-winning writer-director Daisy-May Hudson about her film Lollipop.
Pasquale offers some thoughts on two of EIFF's In Conversation events, the first featuring Gaspar Noé, the innovative, boundary-pushing director of Irreversible (2002) and Enter the Void (2009), the other featuring Oscar-winning film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, best known for her long collaboration with director Martin Scorsese on films such as Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990) and, most recently, Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)