Face2Face with David Peck

Karl Markovics and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new film Nobadi, national socialism, guilt, fear and shame, fairytales for grown ups, Ulysses and why freedom scares us.

Trailer

Synopsis:

Heinrich Senft, a 93 year old, cranky pensioner, lives on a small allotment in Vienna. His dog died during the night and he wants to dig a hole behind his cabin to bury him. But failing to dig it himself he begrudgingly hires a young man from Afghanistan, Adib. While the two struggle to trust each other, Adib finds ways to pacify and appease the angry old man. Senft finds out that Adib has a wound on his foot, which seems rather badly covered up, but Adib pretends that all is well.

When the work is done, Senft seems relieved to have the foreigner out of his back yard. Yet a little while later, when Senft finds Adib unconscious at the bus stop, he knows he will need to help the young man. When Adib regains consciousness, he refuses to go to hospital out of fear to be deported.

Senft decides to take matters into his own hands to save this young man and the two spend a night together that is so full of chance, will-power, and inner revelation, that it sometimes appears hard to believe that these two found each other.

About the Director:

Karl Markovics was born in Austria in 1963. He started his career in Vienna's Serapionstheater and spent 12 years as a freelance actor before landing the role of Stockinger in the TV Series Kommissar Rex in 1993. This brought him to wider public attention and he eventually played the leading role in Stefan Ruzowitzky's Academy Award winning The Counterfeiters in 2008. Breathing, his directorial debut, premiered at Cannes Film Festival at the Directors' Fortnight in 2011, winning the Europa Cinema Label award.

It was screened and awarded at festivals worldwide, including Sarajevo FF (Best Film, Best Actor), and Sao Paolo IFF (Best Film). Superwelt followed in 2014 and screened at Berlinale, Karlovy Vary IFF and New Horizons FF Poland amongst others.

Nobadi is Karl Markovics' third film as a director.

Image Copyright: EPO-Film Vienna and Karl Markovics. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

François Girard and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his new film The Song of Names, history, remembrance, choices, mystery and discovery, film as music, the paradox of technology and musical, archeological digs.

Trailer

Synopsis:

Martin Simmonds (Tim Roth) has been haunted throughout his life by the mysterious disappearance of his “brother” and extraordinary best friend, a Polish Jewish virtuoso violinist, Dovidl Rapaport, who vanished shortly before the 1951 London debut concert that would have launched his brilliant career. Thirty-five years later, Martin discovers that Dovidl (Clive Owen) may still be alive, and sets out on an obsessive intercontinental search to find him and learn why he left.

Shortly before World War II, Martin’s music publisher father, Gilbert (Stanley Townsend), invites young Dovidl Rapoport (Luke Doyle), a ten-year-old Jewish violin prodigy from Poland, to live in their London home. Gilbert’s intent is to help the boy achieve his musical potential and protect him from the imminent German invasion of Poland. Martin (Misha Handley), also ten, initially sees Dovidl as an invader in his house, but Dovidl’s worries about the plight of his family in Warsaw elicits Martin’s compassion, and he is won over by the young genius’s charisma and rebelliousness.

Soon they are as close as brothers. Having the extraordinary Dovidl as his best friend and confidante opens up Martin’s narrow world, and enhances his selfconfidence. Over several years as the boys grow up, Gilbert lavishes all his attention and the money he has on developing Dovidl’s (now Jonah Hauer-King) talent, a process that elicits jealousy from Martin (now Gerran Howell), despite his love for Dovidl. Eventually, Gilbert stages an extravagant London debut for Dovidl at age 21. Unfortunately, as the audience and orchestra await Dovidl’s arrival on stage, Dovidl fails to appear.

The cancellation of the concert bankrupts and devastates Gilbert, who dies soon after. It also leaves Martin with the loss of the “brother” he loved, the lingering question of what happened, and a growing bitterness over Dovidl’s responsibility for Martin’s father’s death. Almost four decades later, Martin follows the clues that lead him ever closer to his friend, until he learns the meaning of ‘The Song of Names,’ a profoundly moving piece of music that holds the answer to why his brother vanished so suddenly from his life.

About the Director:

François Girard gained notoriety as much for his filmmaking as for his staging of operas and theater plays. In 1993, his feature film Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould would go on to garner international success including four top Genie Awards. Five years later he directed The Red Violin, featuring Samuel L. Jackson, which received an Academy Award for best original score and enshrined Girard as an important player on the international movie scene. The film also won eight Genie Awards and nine Jutra Awards. Silk, which he later directed, was adapted from Alessandro Baricco’s best-selling book, and was released worldwide in 2007. The cast includes Michael Pitt, Keira Knightley, Alfred Molina, Miki Nakatani and Koji Yakusho.

SILK received four Jutra Awards. His film Boychoir, released in 2015, features Dustin Hoffman, Kathy Bates and Eddie Izzard among others. Most recently, Hochelaga, Land of Souls, was presented at the Toronto Film Festival, and represented Canada in the race for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 90th Academy Awards. It was released in September 2017 and was greatly acclaimed by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. Girard’s 1994 concert film Peter Gabriel’s Secret World, became a best-selling film and earned him a Grammy Award. A few years later he directed one of the six episodes of the internationally acclaimed series “Yo-Yo Ma Inspired By Bach.”

In 1997, François Girard made his opera directorial debut with Oedipus Rex/Symphony of Psalms by Stravinsky and Cocteau, which received numerous awards and was named by The Guardian as ‘the best theatrical show of the year.’ His other opera works include Lost Objects, for the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Wagner’s Siegfried; The Flight of Lindbergh/Seven Deadly Sins by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht; as well as Kaija Saariaho's Émilie. In recent years, Cirque du Soleil’s commissioned Girard to write and direct Zed, their first permanent show in Tokyo; and Zarkana, which opened at Radio City Music Hall, played at the Kremlin Theatre and has become a resident show in Las Vegas.

To date, François Girard’s accomplishments have earned him over one hundred international awards and public acclaim the world over.

Image Copyright: Serendipity Point Films and François Girard. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yaron Zilberman, Yehuda Nahari Halevi and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film Incitement, the complicated history of the Middle East, justice, peace and racism, inclusion, war and the real cost of radicalization. 

Trailer

Synopsis:

“This rigorous psychological thriller by American-Israeli director Yaron Zilberman (A Late Quartet) depicts the lead-up to the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin through the worldview of his assassin, Yigal Amir.

In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, was assassinated by an ultranationalist, right-wing Zionist who opposed the leader's signing of the Oslo Accords. Rabin's murder is held to be a definitive — and infamous — moment in the struggling peace process with Palestinians and also in Israel's charged history. So much so that it has never been depicted in a feature film, until now.

Israeli-American filmmaker Yaron Zilberman sets out, with a rigourous, exacting gaze, to expose — through the eyes of Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir — the motivations that led to Rabin's death. Set in the year preceding the incident, Zilberman's meticulously crafted period piece is embedded in the world of Amir (portrayed with unsettling stoicism by Yehuda Nahari Halevi), moving from his family home to his failed relationships to his radicalization on illegal settlements.

At its core a psychological thriller, Zilberman's film also neatly weaves in archival footage, foregrounding the high political stakes of the era, and boldly showing the ways in which Israeli society incited one man to such deadly lengths. In this way, and with unflinching clarity, the film draws connective lines from the past to the present.

Co-written by Zilberman and Ron Leshem (who penned the novel and script for the Oscar-nominated Beaufort), and made without state money, Incitement is a gripping work of cinema that concretely writes into history a moment that many would rather not reflect on.”

With thanks to Kiva Reardon - TIFF

About the Guests:

Yaron Zilberman was born in Haifa, Israel. He studied physics at MIT before turning to filmmaking. He wrote, produced, and directed the documentary feature Watermarks. He also directed, co-wrote and produced A Late Quartet, which starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, and Catherine Keener. The film premiered in the Special Presentation program at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. Inspired by and structured around Beethoven's Opus 131, the film follows the world-renowned Fugue String Quartet after its cellist Peter Mitchell is diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. It was a New York Times Critics Pick. Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers called it “a shining gem of a movie” and Roger Ebert said, “it does one of the most interesting things any film can do. It shows how skilled professionals work.”

Zilberman made his directorial debut with his theatrical feature documentary Watermarks, which follows the champion women swimmers of Hakoah Vienna as they reunite at their old swimming pool 65 years after they were forced by the Nazis to flee Austria. Watermarks won nine film festival awards and enjoyed a successful theatrical run internationally.

Yehuda Nahari was born in 1985 in Herzliya.

After graduating from school he joined the army between 2003-2006. In 2007 he met Eyal Cohen, manager of "The Way" where he was discovered and this inspired Yehuda to become an actor. In 2008 he played a series of youth television series "Our High School Song" as "Asi". As part of his school studies he also underwent an acting technique course with Ruth Dytches.

Image Copyright: Yaron Zilberman and Metro Communications. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert Fisk and Yung Chang and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film This Is Not A Movie, fake news and journalism, our addiction to social media, complicity, a “dead language”, and something called, “apparent clarity.”

Trailer

Synopsis:

For more than 40 years, journalist Robert Fisk has reported on some of the most violent and divisive conflicts in the world: Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Syria. Yong Chang’s This Is Not a Movie captures Fisk in action—feet on the ground, notebook in hand, as he travels into landscapes devastated by war, interviewing both combatants and ordinary folk, ferreting out the facts and firing reports back home to reach an audience of millions.

As corporations devour independent media, and language becomes a weapon, another less obvious battle is taking place. In an ever-accelerating 24-hour news cycle, the process of translating raw experience into incisive and passionate dispatches requires the determination to see things first-hand and the tenacity to say what others won’t.  

In his relentless pursuit of the facts, Fisk has attracted his share of controversy. But in spite of the danger, he has continued to cover stories as they unfold, talking directly to the people involved, whether that’s Osama Bin Laden or a young Palestinians woman whose father was recently murdered. Unlike the glamorous films that fueled Fisk’s early ambitions, justice rarely prevails, villains aren’t punished, and there are no tidy endings. As Fisk says, “the truth is that this is not a movie.”

About the Director and Robert:

Yung Chang is the director of Up the Yangtze, China heavyweight and The Fruit Hunters. He is currently completing a screenplay for his first dramatic feature, Eggplant. In 2015, Chang was selected to participate in the prestigious Sundance Labs for Eggplant. His award-winning short Gatekeeper is a Vimeo Staff Pick and distributed by Field of Vision, Laura Poitras’ curated online film unit. 

Chang’s films have screened at international film festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, and IDFA and have played theatrically in cinemas around the world. Up the Yangtze was one of the top-grossing documentary releases in 2008. In 2013, China Heavyweight became the most widely screened social-issues documentary I Chinese history with an official release in 200 Chinese cinemas. 

His films have been critically acclaimed, receiving awards in Paris, Milan, Vancouver, San Francisco, the Canadian Screen Award, Taiwan Golden Horse, Cinema Eye Honors, among others and have been nominated at Sundance, the Independent Spirit Awards and the Emmys.

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Chang's films have been shown on international broadcasters including PBS, National Geographic, ARTE, ZDF, Channel 4, HBO, TMN, NHK, CBC, Bell Media, TV2, SBS, RTS and EBS. He's received funding from major organizations like Sundance Institute, BRITDOC, Telefilm, SODEC, Hot Docs, National Film Board and Canada Council for the Arts.

Chang is the recipient of the Don Haig Award, the Yolande and Pierre Perrault Award, and the Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award. He is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada. In 2013, he was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Academy Awards.

Up the Yangtze and The Fruit Hunters were co-produced by the National Film Board and Eyesteel film. 

Robert Fisk is the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain, according to The New York Times. He is the Middle East correspondent of the London Independent and has won more than 20 major British and international journalism awards for his reporting from the region. He is the author of several bestselling books, including Pity the Nation, an eyewitness account of the Lebanese Civil War, and the historical volume The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. In 2006, he was awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation.

First for The Times of London and then for The Independent, Fisk has been reporting from the Middle East for nearly 40 years, covering everything from the Lebanese Civil War in the 1980s to the Israeli invasions of Lebanon. He was among the first Western journalists to report the massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. He also witnessed and reported from the Iranian Revolution (1979), the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), the Algerian Civil War (1990–1998), the US-Iraqi Gulf War (1991), the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts (1992–1995, 1998), the American attack on Afghanistan (2001), and the US invasion of Iraq (2003). He covered many of the 2011 Arab revolutions, especially Egypt, and is today reporting from the civil war in Syria.

He is the only journalist to have interviewed Osama bin Laden three times—first in Sudan and then in Al-Qaeda’s secret camps in Afghanistan. Born in England in 1946, Fisk holds a BA in English and Linguistics from Lancaster University in the UK, and a PhD in Politics from Trinity College, University of Dublin. He has received 17 honorary doctorates from British, Canadian, and other universities. He is a frequent broadcaster and lecturer around the world.

Fisk is the author of five books, including two works on Irish history, one of them an account of Irish neutrality in the Second World War; it remains a bestseller. Outside of the Middle East, Fisk has written and lectured extensively on the First and Second World Wars. He was the first Englishman to be invited to give a lecture to the families of Irish Catholics killed by British soldiers on Bloody Sunday.

He remains based in Beirut as The Independent’s Middle East correspondent and is currently working on a new history of the region called Night of Power.

Image Copyright: TINAM Inc. and the NFB. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Klaudia Reynicke Barbara Giordano and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film Love Me Tender, anti-superheroes, mental health issues, agoraphobia, connecting with others and the sometime difficult journeys we all seem to take.

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Synopsis:

The daily life of a 32-year-old woman suffering from agoraphobia, SECONDA, suddenly changes when her mother dies and her father abandons her. Alone and unable to leave her home, she clings to the phone messages of a snarling bailiff who one day stops calling. Unable to end her life, she offers a deal to SANTO, a bottle picker: she will give him her house in exchange for her own murder. Santo runs away, leaving Seconda alone in her despair.

The only link she has left with the outside world is the repetitive and disconcerting visit of a little girl who attacks her from the outside, pushing her to the limit.

In order to feel protected, Seconda wears her blue suit and goes out, walking in the streets of her city in search of her freedom, until she confronts her own demons that she will have to face.

A tough and determined anti-super heroine, she will achieve this with her own resources.

About the Director and Cast:

Klaudia Reynicke is a Swiss Peruvian scriptwriter and film director. Before dedicating herself to film, she studied visual arts and sociology. In 2005 she attended the Tisch School of Arts at the NY University where she directed her first short. Later, her encounter with the Swiss director Jacqueline Veuve whom she assisted during 2006, confirmed her desire to become a film director herself.

In 2010 she obtained a M.A. in filmmaking from the ECAL-HEAD. Love Me Tender is her 2nd feature film.

Barbara Giordano studied at the Silvio D'Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art. She made her debut at the age of 15 as a protagonist at the Teatro Stabile in Catania in I Beati Paoli directed by G. Di Pasquale. Before being the protagonist of Love Me Tender she starred in Meraviglioso Boccaccio by the Fratelli Taviani. She has been a prominent TV and theatre actor since 12994.

Her mother was well-known actress Mariella Lo Giudice. At the age of 18 she moved from her native Sicily to Rome where she still lives.

Image Copyright: Amka and First Hand Films. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

August Diehl and Valerie Pachner and Face2Face host David Peck talk about Terence Malik’s new film A Hidden Life, true love, pacifism and evil, truth and justice, taking an ethical stance and standing up to power.

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Synopsis:

“..for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

George Eliot

A Hidden Life is based on the true story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant farmer who refused to take the oath of allegiance to Hitler during World War II, sacrificing everything, including his life, rather than to fight for the Nazis.

When Franz is called up to basic training, a requirement for all Austrian men, he is away from his beloved wife and children for months. Eventually, when France surrenders and it seems the war might end soon, he is sent back home. His mother and sister-in-law Resie come to live with them, and for a while things seem to go on as normal.

Instead of retreating, the war escalates, and Franz and the other men in the village are called up to fight. The first requirement of a new soldier is to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Despite pleas from his neighbors, fellow soldiers and commanding officers, Franz refuses the oath—objecting to Hitler and the Nazi regime. With a sense of personal responsibility and the inability to do what he believes is wrong, Franz refuses.

After months of incarceration, the case goes to trial. Franz is found guilty and sentenced to death. Franz continues to stand up for his beliefs and is executed by the Third Reich in August 1943. His wife and three daughters survive.  

The relationship, however, between Franz and his wife Fani endures. The film portrays their bond as deeply as Franz’s devotion to his cause. At every turn Fani is there for Franz - strong, unfaltering and supportive of his path while raising their daughters and running the farm alone, eventually with help from her mother-in-law and sister.

Terence Malik’s film draws on actual letters exchanged between Franz and Fani while Jägerstätter was in prison. The collection was edited by Erna Putz and published in English by Orbis Books. Some lines have been added to the letters, and sometimes the letters are paraphrased.

The story was little known outside of St. Radegund, and might never have been discovered, were it not for the research of Gordon Zahn, an American who visited the village in the 1970s.

About the Cast:

August Diehl made his debut in 23, which garnered him a Bavarian Film Award for Best Young Actor and a German Film Award for Best Actor. Best known for his role in the Academy Award-Winning The Counterfeiters and Inglorious Bastards Diehl’s additional credits include The Ninth Day, Slumming and If Not Us, Who.

Valerie Pachner was Born in Wels, Upper Austria, and trained at the famous Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. She moved to Munich after completing her studies. In 2013 she became part of the permanent ensemble at the Residenztheater.

In addition to her stage work, Pachner also took on movie roles, among them Egon Schiele: Death and The Maiden, a part for which she was awarded the Austrian Film Prize. Pachner played the lead in The Ground Beneath My Feet which received its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019.

Image Copyright: Elizabeth Bay Productions Productions. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mahnaz Mohammadi, Farzad Pak and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film Son/Mother, activism, family, choices and women’s rights, tradition, values and storytelling, patriarchy, empathy and how things do change bit by bit, over time. 

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Synopsis:

Leila is a single working mom of two. The factory she works at faces a crisis and jobs are at stake. Kazem, the factory bus driver, proposes marriage to Leila, but she hesitates to accept his conditions. Kazem has a daughter the same age as her 12-year-old son, Amir, and since tradition frowns upon a young girl sharing a household with her step-brother, Kazem tells Leila not to bring her son until he marries his daughter off.

After Leila is fired from her job, she makes the decision to stay with Kazem and leave Amir at a boarding school for deaf children, while she tries to manage his return. There, Amir is forced to pretend he’s deaf-and-dumb, and after a few months tries to run away to search for his mother. On the run, he faces Kazem who asks him to think about his family’s future. Amir has to decide.

About the Directors:

Well-known for her provocative documentaries on social issues as well as her tireless activism, Iranian director Mahnaz Mohammadi has made headlines in the likes of The Guardian, the Hollywood Reporter or Variety, and has been supported by Amnesty International and the French Directors Guild (Société des réalisateurs de films) among others.

Mohammadi wrote and directed her first short documentary, Women without Shadows, in 2003. She instantly received praise at international film festivals for her depiction of homeless and abandoned women in a state-run shelter, and continued documenting everyday lives and struggles of people in her next couple of films.

The award-winning feature documentary Travelogue was shot on a train going from Tehran to Ankara, where Mohammadi questioned passengers about the reasons why they decided to flee the country. The film premiered in 2010 at the ‘A Day in Tehran’ event in Paris, with the director in attendance, which became one of the reasons for Iranian authorities to ban Mohammadi from leaving the country and from producing any more films.

The avid women’s rights activist also contributed to Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s documentary We Are Half the Iran’s Population, which portrayed the demands of Iranian women in the 2009 presidential election. At the time, Mohammadi was already considered a public enemy, her passport was withheld by the court, and her home was searched. The authorities also confiscated her work and filming equipment along with other personal belongings, while banning her from working as a filmmaker. Several of her films have been banned in Iran. In 2011, she starred in Reza Serkanian‘s drama The Momentary Marriage and was invited to the 64th Cannes Film Festival, but was not allowed to attend. Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras read a letter she sent, including the famous words: “I am a woman, I am a filmmaker, two sufficient grounds to be guilty in this country.” In June, she was arrested and jailed in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison. A month later, she was released on bail.

Farzad Park is the producer, long-time member of the Association of Independent Iranian Producers, and head of the Filminiran production company.

During his 20-year career in documentary and fi lm, he has worked in both Iranian and international productions spanning from Joanna Lumley’s silk road documentary to Costanza Quatriglio’s war drama Just Like My Son (Sembra mio fi glio), which was released in 2018 as an Italian, Croatian, and Belgian co-production.

Image Copyright: Farzad Park and Europe Media Nest. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

IGG Nabwana, VJ Emmie and Alan Ssali Hofmanis talk about their new film Crazy World, African storytelling, action films, traditions and taking chances and the super success of the Ugandan Wakaliwood.

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Synopsis:

In the latest from Uganda’s gonzo action auteur IGG Nabwana, a gang of child-snatching mobsters make a fatal mistake when they kidnap the Waka Stars, a team of pint-sized kung-fu masters who soon turn their cunning wits and deadly skills upon their captors.

For the past decade, IGG Nabwana and his crack team of fearless filmmakers and martial artists in the slums of Kampala, Uganda, have steadily produced dozens of exhilarating gonzo action films as part of an inspiring creative movement known as Wakaliwood. With their meagre resources buoyed by an exuberant ingenuity, these self-consciously scrappy epics chronicle domestic scandals and adversities ripped straight from the local headlines with brash exploitation-filmmaking gusto.

Conceived by Nabwana as a pre-emptive measure to discourage the kidnapping of his own children (seriously), Crazy World opens with the notorious Tiger Mafia (a frequent Wakaliwood antagonist) embarking on a child-abduction spree. Intending to sacrifice children in a misguided belief that their blood contains magical properties, the criminals make a crucial mistake when they snatch the WAKA STARS, Uganda's pint-sized kung-fu masters. Before long, these badass brats start applying their martial-arts prowess and cunning wits to escape their captors, while their desperate parents commence a rescue/revenge mission of their own.

Crazy World is the third Wakaliwood feature to be translated for an international release following Who Killed Captain Alex? and Bad Black, both of which earned accolades and awards at international film festivals around the globe. Per a Ugandan oral tradition, every outrageous moment is both contextualized and accentuated by the acerbic wit of an offscreen narrator or "video joker," who at one point exclaims: "BEST KIDZ MOVIE EVAH!" He is not wrong. Welcome to Wakaliwood.

About our Guests:

IGG Nabwana was born in Kampala, Uganda. Since 2005, he has directed nearly 50 feature films, including Who Killed Captain Alex?, Rescue Team, Bukunja Tekunja Mitti: The Cannibals, The Revenge, and Bad Black. Crazy World is the first of his films to screen at the Festival.

VJ Emmie (Video Joker) is Part Narrator, part Cheerleader, a Video Joker is a unique Ugandan style of storytelling where a translate a movie live before an audience, when normal subtitles are not possible for technical reasons or illiteracy. It is an extremely popular art form within Uganda and VJ Emmie is easily the most famous with over 5000 titles to his name and a career spanning 10 years, starting with Who Killed Captain Alex: Uganda's First Action Movie. 

The World Premiere of Wakaliwood's Crazy World at TIFF will be the first live VJ performance outside Uganda, and the first time VJ Emmie has traveled outside Uganda.

Neither he nor filmmaker Nabwan IGG have ever been to a movie theatre.

Alan Ssali Hofmanis is the co-producer and a festival program director in a previous life, Alan Ssali Hofmanis sold everything he had in NY and moved into the Ugandan village of Wakailga with Nabwana IGG and his team to help produce, translate, and share these films with the world. He is also a bonafide Ugandan action move star, starring in Wakaliwood's previous hit film, Bad Black, winner of the Audience Award at Fantastc Fest in Austin, TX.

Image Copyright: IGG Nabwana and Wakaliwood. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fisher Stevens and Malcolm Venville and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new film And We Go Green, the environment, Climate Change, eco-capitalists, Electric Cars, Formula E and social innovation. 

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Synopsis:

Formula E, the groundbreaking electric car racing series, has grown from upstart championship to the world's fastest growing sport in 4 short years. Through its pulsating and unpredictable racing spectacle featuring the most skillful drivers and most advanced car manufacturers, Formula E is exciting millions about the potential of electric performance in order to combat climate change and air pollution in our cities.

With unprecedented access, And We Go Green is the human story of the live wires, underdogs and visionaries who have made this sport such a success and are reinventing racing for the next generation of motorsport fans.

Directed by Fisher Stevens and Malcolm Venville and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, this highly cinematic documentary uses intimate character-driven storylines, behind-the-scenes vérité, and thrilling race footage to thrust you into the drama of a climatic 2018/19 championship and leave you in the driving seat in a race against the clock for a cleaner future.

About the Directors:

Fisher Stevens has been in the entertainment business for over 30 years. He directed The Confidence Man, ”for Netflix original series Dirty Money, and, with Leonardo DiCaprio, National Geographic’s Before the Flood, winner of the Hollywood Film Award. He co-directed two-time Emmy-nominated Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds for HBO, and directed three-time Emmy-nominated Netflix original film Mission Blue. He co-directed Independent Spirit Award-winning Crazy Love.

Stevens also produced Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove, and follow-up film, Racing Extinction for Discovery, nominated for an Academy Award for best song. He produced Emmy-nominated film Woody Allen: A Documentary for American Masters, SXSW Grand Jury Award-winner Beware of Mr. Baker, and 2016 Sundance opening-night documentary, Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang for Netflix. Stevens directed Paramount Classic’s feature film Just a Kiss, starring Marisa Tomei, Kyra Sedgwick and Taye Diggs. He produced films including five-time Academy Award-nominated drama In the Bedroom, A Prairie Home Companion, Piñero, Swimfan, and Uptown Girls. Stevens directed feature film Stand Up Guys for Lionsgate starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin. He also directed John Leguizamo’s Ghetto Klown, on Broadway, which he later adapted and directed for an HBO special.

As an actor, Stevens appears in numerous television shows and movies, including The Blacklist, The Good Fight, the Cohen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! and Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs.

Malcolm Venville is a performance driven visual storyteller whose projects span the mediums of film, television, commercials and documentaries.

His advertising campaigns include Apple, Volkswagen, Nike, Porsche and Google. Notable commercials Apple iPad Air Pencil, Google's New Baby, and Squarespace's debut Super Bowl spot.

More recently, he gave an introduction to the workers at Jack Daniel's in the spot From the Maker's Of. Venville made his feature film debut with the dark comedy 44 Inch Chest starring Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, John Hurt, and Tom Wilkinson.

His next film, Henry's Crime, featured Keanu Reeves, Vera Farmiga, and James Caan. His work also includes the documentary shorts Portrait of a Dancer and Philophiles. He has published three works of photography: The Women of Casa X, Lucha Loco, a collection of more than 100 portraits of Mexican wrestlers; and Layers, a monograph of his work as an art and advertising photographer.

Venville has most recently been working on a feature length documentary about Formula E “And We Go Green”, the electric car racing formula and a limited series for A&E on the life of United States President, Civil War hero, and abolitionist, Ulysses S. Grant.

Image Copyright: Appian Way and Bloomfish Productions. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jan Komasa and Face2Face host David Peck talk about his brilliant, engaging, thoughtful new film Corpus Christi, redemption and the power of communities to reconcile and restore, the Polish Bible Belt, shame, guilt and forgiveness and the ability to healing through our relationships with others. 

Trailer

“Komasa directs with an impressive rigor that fits the subject matter, and the incorporation of subtle ecclesiastical embellishments in the score adds to the imposing solemnity. The smoldering center of it all is Bielenia’s remarkable performance.”                                            

The Hollywood Reporter

Synopsis:

Recently released from a youth detention facility, a young man hiding from his past poses as a priest in a small Polish town, where the healing he provides may not be enough to resolve his own test of faith. When the whole world is at odds and all seems lost, what is left? Corpus Christi is the story of 20-year-old Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia, a major talent on the rise), who, after serving a sentence in a youth detention centre for a violent crime, must face his inner demons while searching for redemption.

Running from the troubles that haunt him and hiding from his past by posing as a priest in a small Polish town, Daniel is, clandestinely, given the chance for spiritual transformation. Meanwhile, the arrival of this charismatic young preacher provides an opportunity for his divided flock to begin healing after a polarizing tragedy. But not everyone is capable of forgiveness or deliverance, and following the road to salvation can also lead one astray.

As his past sins catch up to his already heavy and burdened conscience, Daniel's intentions are murky and the haven of religion may prove to be more than just a spiritual escape. Set in a country with increasingly blurred lines between church and state, Corpus Christi calls dogma and prostrating into question as Daniel's real test of faith ultimately presents itself at a moment when he's not at the altar.

With thanks to Dorota lech from TIFF

About the Director:

Jan Komasa is a Polish film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for directing the films Suicide Room and Warsaw 44. His films were premiered or won awards at Cannes Film Festival Berlin Film Festival, Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival.

Komasa was born in Poznan, Greater Poland. His father, Wieslaw Komasa, is an acclaimed theater actor and professor at National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw. His mother, Gina Komasa, is a singer, music producer, music supervisor. She was a Director of Entertainment Department at Polish Television and a director of festivals: Sopot International Song Festival, National Festival of Polish Song in Opole. His brother, Szymon Komasa, is a bass-baritone singer, graduate of Jiulliard School in New York and Guildhall School of Music in London.

He has two sisters: Maria Komasa-Łazarkiewicz is a singer, composer and wife of a composer Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz. Zofia Komasa is a costume designer. Komasa clearly come from a talented family of artists and was raised in Warsaw, where they moved in 1988. He attended Stanislaw Moniuszko Primary Music School. He, along with his siblings, was a child actor in television shows, programmes and movies due to his mother professional engagement at Polish Television.

In 1993 his father played a part in Schindler's List. Watching the film crew work and meeting Steven Spielberg made him consider film directing as his future profession.

He graduated from National Film School in Łódz and currently teaches at the Theatre Academy in Warsaw.

His new film Suicide Room: The Hater is to be premiered in 2020.

Image Copyright: Aurum Film and Jan Komasa. Used with permission.

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.