FRED Film Radio - English Channel

Eva Sangiorgi, festival director of the Viennale 2026, describes an event built around bringing a broad selection of recent cinema to audiences in Vienna. The festival combines contemporary films with historical programmes, without dividing its main selection into competitions or genre categories. Sangiorgi’s account offers a view of how the Viennale balances discovery, accessibility and film history. Its programme reflects both the range of cinema being made today and the festival’s relationship with its local audience.

The Viennale takes place across independent cinemas in Vienna, with a programme designed primarily for the city’s filmgoers rather than industry professionals. Sangiorgi says the festival presents more than 100 contemporary feature films and over 40 shorts, bringing together work from varied countries, production contexts and scales. The selection ranges from films backed by major studios or streaming companies to independently made projects. Rather than separating documentary from fiction or sorting films into numerous categories, the programme places different approaches alongside one another. Sangiorgi looks for work that can surprise, whether through familiar storytelling, experimental form or a combination of styles, while retaining a distinct artistic perspective.

The absence of an official competition shapes the Viennale’s atmosphere and gives Sangiorgi greater freedom in programming. Established filmmakers can appear alongside emerging artists and lesser-known discoveries, without the films being arranged according to status or production budget. The festival also does not rely on premiere requirements to determine its choices, allowing the selection to follow the director’s interests. Sangiorgi describes the relationship with Vienna’s audience as one of mutual trust: regular attendees are willing to encounter unfamiliar work as well as more recognisable names. That openness, she suggests, helps the festival remain varied and relaxed.

The festival’s historical offerings provide a counterpoint to its contemporary selection, connecting current filmmaking with cinema’s past. A major retrospective, organised with the Vienna Film Museum, is devoted to Robert Aldrich, with screenings continuing beyond the festival through November. Other strands include filmmaker-focused monographies, studies of a particular period in an artist’s work, and selections of recently restored films. This year’s programme also includes a focus on Jocelyne Saab, whose work Sangiorgi considers insufficiently represented in German-speaking countries. Together, these strands give audiences opportunities to revisit overlooked filmmakers, explore specific cinematic histories and encounter restored works on the big screen.

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During the Rome Film Fest 2026, we spoke with Ruth Beckermann, director of the documentary feature Wax & Gold. The documentary, presented at the Festival, examines Ethiopia through the life of a hotel and the histories attached to it. The film brings together contemporary scenes, archival footage, music and reflections on how outsiders have represented the country. Beckermann’s account is indeed notable for questioning both the European gaze and the easy narratives that can turn historical figures into symbols.

During our interview for FRED Film Radio, it was clear how the Hilton in Addis Ababa offered Ruth Beckermann a setting through which to encounter middle- and upper-class guests alongside employees with relatively stable work. In her documentary Wax & Gold, did not want to frame Ethiopia solely through images of rural poverty, a perspective that often dominates television coverage. The hotel does obviously not represent every layer of society, she stressed, but its mix of visitors and workers reveals a different part of the country. Its routines also give the documentary a place from which to observe social relations without claiming to speak for all Ethiopians.

Much of the historical footage in Wax & Gold was made by British, Italian and other European filmmakers or journalists, and Beckermann told us how she treated those images not as neutral proof, but as material shaped by the viewpoints of their makers and by her own position as a European filmmaker. The documentary indeed asks viewers to consider where historical images come from and how their meaning is formed. That approach also informs its portrait of Hailé Selassié, whose long rule included modernisation but also neglect during devastating famines. Beckermann described the emperor as a complicated figure, whose later reputation has been coloured by what followed his overthrow, including the communist regime.

Sound gives the film another way to approach Ethiopia beyond archival images and narration. Beckermann drew on Ethiopian jazz, and a musical passage accompanies the film’s departure from the hotel and the journey through the city, bringing its streets into the documentary’s sensory landscape. Beckermann’s Wax & Gold also reflects on Addis Ababa’s rapid transformation, where new construction exists alongside persistent poverty. While nonetheless Europeans may favour preserving old urban spaces, she found a sort of untold energy also in the city’s drive for better infrastructure and new buildings, even if it means contrasting that confidence in the future with Europe’s attachment to its past.

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Presented in competition at Alice nella Città 2026, Mala Bèstia marks Bàrbara Farré’s feature directorial debut, exploring adolescence through the unsettling language of dark fairy tales and psychological thrillers. Farré and producer Diego Betancor discuss the film’s personal origins, its examination of female identity and the importance of preserving creative freedom in contemporary filmmaking.

At the center of the story is Atenea, a girl at a boarding school who desperately wants to remain a child. When a couple offers her the possibility of a family, she begins to imagine a future shaped by affection and belonging. Yet the fear of losing her place, or being replaced, gradually awakens something darker within her.

Rather than approaching adolescence realistically, Farré turns the anxieties of growing up into a disturbing narrative about bodily transformation, desire, and the need to be accepted.

For Farré, portraying adolescence as a threatening experience comes directly from her own memories of growing up.

The title Mala Bèstia suggests monstrosity, yet Farré rejects the idea that the beast should necessarily be understood as an external threat.

The film’s distinctive visual and narrative identity also reflects an unusual creative relationship between Farré and Betancor.

For Farré, making her first feature was also a chance to define her relationship with cinema.

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During the 24th edition of Alice nella Città, in Rome, we spoke with character designer Thibault Leclercq for the film Wildwood, e mesmerizing tale of adventure and discovery that uses the stop-motion animation technique with a bigger scale than ever. The film adapts a novel by Colin Meloy enriched by his wife Carson Ellis’ illustrations, which provided a distinctive starting point also for the character designs of the film. Leclercq describes indeed how the team sought to honour that visual identity while shaping characters for a feature film with a more mature tone, also revealing how Portland’s landscape and the practical demands of puppetry helped in creating the film’s blend of naturalism and fantasy.

During our interview on FRED Film Radio, Leclercq stated that the Wildwood design process began with a commitment to retain the charm and illustrative quality associated with Ellis’s work. That influence appears in the puppets’ fine details, from their hair and anatomical features to the patterns on their costumes. The designs also preserve a simplicity in their silhouettes, keeping a connection to the source material without reproducing it unchanged. At the same time, Leclercq aimed to give the characters greater sophistication, suited to a story that moves between wonder, hardship and darkness.

The narrative strenght of Wildwood also lays in its relationship with the natural world shaped the visual approach, character designer Thibault Leclercq also explains. Rather than relying on obvious symbols, the designer team drew on organic forms, subtle curves and asymmetry, allowing small irregularities to make the characters feel connected to nature. His own experience of moving to Portland to work on the film offered a close view of how residents relate to the surrounding woods and landscape. Observing local habits and ways of dressing helped him develop a more grounded sense of the world the characters inhabit.

Also the animal characters required a balance between expressive movement and believable animal behaviour. What Leclercq said to FRED Film Radio is that the Wildwood design team worked alongside the puppet team to make the creatures convincing, including coyotes that move upright despite being naturally four-legged. The “Napoleonic” costumes of some of the characters also add an intentionally unsettling quality, while the characters remain recognisably animals rather than humans concealed by animal disguises. A balance of fantastic and realistic, among many other incredible aspects, that makes Wildwood in of the most astonishing examples of stop-motion animation of our times.

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Marian Arechega, the director of the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival, discusses the evolution and highlights of the festival’s 13th edition. She emphasises the festival’s growth in Scotland, its diverse programming, and its efforts to foster cultural exchange through Spanish cinema. This interview offers insight into how the festival continues to strengthen its role as a key platform for Spanish films in the UK.

Marian Arechega explains that the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival began thirteen years ago with no prior experience in organising such an event. Over time, it has established itself firmly within Scotland, attracting a growing audience and creating a stable cultural initiative. Originally focused solely on Edinburgh, the festival now extends its screenings to several Scottish cities and even beyond, including one event in Manchester, broadening its impact and visibility.

This year’s edition features a wide-ranging programme that defies a single theme, offering genres from drama and comedy to social cinema and romance. Marian highlights that the core focus is on imperfect family relationships, exploring conflicts and secrets across generations. The festival also emphasises stories of individuals seeking their place in the world, with films portraying both youth and older generations, and dialogues connecting past and present. A notable aspect is its commitment to showcasing female voices and stories of resilience.

The festival maintains a strong presence of Spanish films, with special sections that highlight films made in the Basque Country and in Latin America. Marian notes that Latin American cinema is always part of the programme, despite logistical challenges and costs. The Basque window is a recent addition, supported by a sponsor, showcasing films in both Euskera and Spanish. This year’s selection includes the queer ageing dramedy Maspalomas (Dirs. Jose Mari Goenaga and Aitor Arregui, 2025), and folk horror fantasy Gaua, directed by Paul Urkijo. This diversity underscores the festival’s role in promoting lesser-represented regions and languages within Spanish-speaking cinema, enriching the cultural dialogue in Scotland.

Among this edition’s highlights, Arechega discusses the sold-out gala screenings of Rondallas/Band Together (Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, 2026), which opens the festival with the presence of leading actors Judith Fernández and Fer Fraga (in the photo with Marian), and the special preview of this year’s Spanish Oscar contender La bola negra, directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (winners of this year’s Cannes Festival Award for Best Direction). Author and screenwriter Alberto Conejero will be in attendance at the Festival for a Q&A after the screening.

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In Italian cinemas from October 1, distributed by MUBI, Her Private Hell is Nicolas Winding Refn‘s first feature in ten years, since The Neon Demon.

Set in a surreal, futuristic metropolis shrouded in pink mist, the film follows Elle (Sophie Thatcher), a rising movie star preparing to shoot a space odyssey alongside her ex-lover turned stepmother (Havana Rose Liu), while elsewhere in the haze an American GI (Charles Melton) wanders the desolate streets in a desperate search for his daughter. As a sinister figure known only as the Leather Man stalks the city’s shadows, their lives begin to converge, dissolving the boundaries between past and present, memory and fate.

The director talks about blending many genres into a single film, the father-daughter relationship at its core, his collaboration with composer Pino Donaggio, and the near-death experience that brought him back to cinema after years spent in the world of streaming.

For Refn, the starting point was the idea that genres no longer need to be kept apart: “I wanted to make a movie that was sci-fi, thriller, horror, camp, comedy, symbolism, opera, melodrama, but all in one. So, suddenly everything became elements”. He traces that impulse back to a childhood memory: “I remembered when I first came to America, when I was 8 years old, and I discovered television and the idea that I could click channels. That was so new to me, that on every channel there would be something else. So it’s what you would do in scrolling today, and I would be very addicted to this constant movement of my hands between the channels”. Going back to filmmaking, he explains, meant a clean break: “I wanted to get away from my past and to completely re-envision what I think cinema of the future is. And obviously that became Her Private Hell”.

At the heart of the film is the bond between fathers and daughters, which Refn describes as “a very complex theme, because having two daughters, it’s very complex”. He wanted to overturn a genre convention he finds peculiar: “Most films of genre are about violent men doing violence to save their children and justifying extreme violence. And I found that very peculiar, because it was almost like pornography for men. It’s a very male kind of fetish and fantasy”. So he flipped the perspective: “I thought it could be interesting to reverse engineer it, that it’s about a daughter whose father is taken away from her by her lover. So you have a pretty dramatic triangle, and then she creates an alter ego, which is the perfect father that would go to hell to bring back his daughter, which is something we all would want to be as men”. Refn sees the film as a companion piece to Only God Forgives, “which is very much about a mother and son relationship and the incestuous component of the mother species devouring her children”.

Unlike his previous projects, Refn had no idea at first what the film should sound like: “I usually have a musical idea very early in the stages of a film or the shows I make. But with Her Private Hell, I didn’t have any idea what the film was going to sound like, because there were so many elements combined. And it was a bit frustrating”. The answer came during the shoot: “About halfway through the production, I realized that what I really wanted to make was an opera. And I said, ‘Okay, it’s an opera. At least I know what that sounds like’”.

That led him to Pino Donaggio, whose music had been with him for a long time: “Like the last 20 years I’ve used Pino’s music as a kind of source, and I realized that he was still alive. So I reached out to him, and he was young at heart even though he was an older gentleman”. Refn set only one condition: “That you turn it into an opera, because all these pieces had to be tied together. Something had to connect all these various ideas that I couldn’t and I wouldn’t change, and that would be the music. So what would tie everything like a bow would be Pino’s music”.

Explaining the long gap since his last feature, Refn recalls being at Cannes with Only God Forgives just as Netflix was launching its original shows: “I could see right away, in my opinion, that this was going to change everything”. After The Neon Demon, he says, “I’d kind of come to the end of what I really wanted to do with movies, and then I went into the world of streaming, or let me put it like this, I fell into the rabbit hole of streaming”.

He made a show for Amazon and Copenhagen Cowboy for Netflix, both of which he enjoyed making, unlike the streaming environment itself, while a planned HBO show, Maniac Cop, never happened. Then came a collaboration with Prada and the half-hour film Touch of Crude: “It was the first time I made anything that had no desire to be commercial. It was like painting a white wall blue, and it was never going to be as good as that again. So why continue?”

“And then I died”, Refn says plainly. “When I was dead for 20 minutes and came back, it was almost like God gave me a second chance, and I realized that I want to go back and start over again, and that is cinema”. By then, he says, streaming had turned into “more generic algorithmic content”: “It’s a very functioning mechanism, but I don’t find it particularly interesting, because I don’t think the algorithm is very healthy for the human soul. It just consumes your time. But trust me, being dead, you come back, you realize how valuable time is”.

Between Her Private Hell and the exhibitions created with Prada in Tokyo and New York, cinema is now, for him, part of something larger: “For me, cinema is no longer one thing, it’s part of many things. So one idea which used to be cinema is now an opportunity to create multiple avenues of the same idea because of technology. And I think that is super fascinating”.

That experience, Refn explains, “deconstructed the sense of what I think narrative is and should be”: “A lot of our time is spent on getting or having information through entertainment, but not a lot about experiencing time. And to me, I think the most important aspect of any creative experience is having a sense of an odyssey. And to do that, you need to break the barriers of our brains, our skull, our armor. So art becomes an act of violence meant to penetrate your mind and inspire. But to do that, it needs to infuriate you or it needs to make you cry or make you happy. That’s why polarization is the success of creativity”. And he concludes: “Time is everything, and time is what deconstructs your life, and it’s just incredibly valuable”.

With his daughter, Refn says, the exchange goes both ways: “It’s always important that you try to educate your kids and everything, but at the same time, you also have to listen to them. So she kept on trying to persuade me how good Riverdale was, and it took me some time to accept, and then when I saw it, I was like, ‘You’re right’”. In return, he showed her Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc: “Seeing how she reacts to something that is so foreign to her normal day entertainment, and how she was affected by it and could see that this is probably the greatest film ever made. Like those are the things that give you hope for the next generation”. In that generation he sees a new kind of freedom: “The democracy of filmmaking, the ecosystem has been completely turned upside down. So now everything is accessible and everyone can create. And I think that’s incredibly healthy and it’s very inspiring”.

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Torsten Frehse, director and founder of the EWIP – European Work in Progress platform, discusses the significance of this initiative in supporting European and international film projects. The conversation highlights the platform’s role in bridging the gap between production and distribution, and  emphasizes the importance of EWIP in fostering a more dynamic and accessible market for emerging filmmakers.

Frehse explains that EWIP serves as a crucial marketplace where projects in the midst of production or post-production can be showcased to a targeted audience of buyers, sales agents, and festival representatives. It’s focus on distribution is due to the extensive experience of its director: Torsten Frehse is CEO of the German distribution company Neue Visionen, and his co-director Olimpia Pont Cháfer, is the coordinator of the Spanish film distributor association, ADICINE and responsable of acquistions of the German distribution company Piffl Medien.

One of the key initiatives within EWIP is its focus on authentic African films, which Torsten Frehse describes as a response to the often stereotypical representation of African cinema in the international market. He recounts how his own efforts to connect African filmmakers with European distributors led to the creation of the African European Distribution Academy (AEDA), now part of the international distribution training program Toolbox of the Berlinale EFM. Frehse stresses that the platform aims to showcase genuine stories from Africa, often made by filmmakers from the diaspora, rather than conforming to festival trends or neo-colonial expectations. This approach seeks to give African projects a fairer chance at international circulation, emphasizing authenticity and cultural diversity.

Looking ahead, Torsten Frehse highlights the ongoing evolution of EWIP and IFDS  as a vital hub for innovation in film distribution and financing. He mentions that the platform not only facilitates deals between producers and international sales agents but also fosters dialogue among distributors, funders, and festival programmers. The platform’s awards and in-kind support for completing films are designed to incentivize filmmakers and ensure projects reach the finish line. Frehse concludes that EWIP’s expanding network and its commitment to diverse, bold projects will continue to shape the landscape of European and global cinema, making it an essential part of the industry’s future.

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Avec Pascal Diot, directeur du Venice Production Bridge, nous avons discuté des résultats obtenus après 15 ans — puisque c’est la 15e édition cette année — d’avoir créé un endroit où les professionnels du cinéma ont plaisir à revenir pour discuter, négocier, échanger et travailler dans une atmosphère à la fois détendue et efficace.

Diot nous dévoile un nouvel événement au sein du Venice Production Bridge, le VPB Location Market, destiné à couvrir l’ensemble de la chaîne de production du cinéma. Les lieux de tournage étaient un maillon manquant, pourtant essentiel pour les producteurs : sans lieu, pas de tournage possible. Le VPB Location Market rassemble des commissions du film et des studios, en créant un événement dédié au sein d’un festival de classe A — une première.

L’événement se tient au Matchpoint Arena, où ont lieu traditionnellement les masterclasses du festival chaque après-midi. La programmation a été adaptée pour le matin : l’espace accueille deux ou trois panels chaque matin, destinés aussi bien aux professionnels qu’au grand public, puisqu’il s’agit d’un lieu ouvert à tous.

Diot confie avoir reçu de nombreuses demandes cette année, notamment pour des panels sur l’intelligence artificielle : submergé de propositions, il n’en a finalement sélectionné que deux ou trois. Pour soutenir le VPB Location Market, il a également créé un panel dédié aux lieux de tournage. Les sections traditionnelles du VPB restent inchangées, comme le Book Adaptation Bridge, limité à 30 participants tenus de venir avec l’intégralité de leur catalogue, ou encore le Venice Gap Financing Market, le marché de coproduction, qui compte déjà plus de 900 rendez-vous prévus sur trois jours.

Deux pays particulièrement chers à Diot sont cette année les pays d’honneur : la Suisse et la Grèce. Il se réjouit de cette double présence, qui correspond pour ces deux pays à un moment charnière. En Grèce, la fusion de plusieurs entités a donné naissance à une structure unique, le Hellenic Film and Audiovisual Centre (EKKOMED), qui devrait considérablement faciliter et soutenir l’industrie cinématographique du pays. En Suisse, les autorités réfléchissent également à revoir et à augmenter leurs subventions afin d’attirer davantage de tournages.

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Presented in the Open section, out of competition, at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival 2026, Boatbuilders is set at the head of a remote Maine harbor, where the sixty-some workers of the Brooklin Boat Yard coax wooden planks around a frame, make precise saw cuts, and sand edges for flawless joints, resulting in some of the most stunning and sought-after wooden vessels in the world. Over the course of four vibrant seasons, director Luke Lorentzen tracks the boatbuilders’ meticulous construction of a 56-foot sailboat while embedding us in the lives of these men and their close-knit community. Lorentzen talks about why he chose this story after a difficult previous film, about building the film as an ensemble rather than around a single lead, and about the attention to detail he learned from the boatbuilders themselves.

Lorentzen explains that Boatbuilders was, in part, a deliberate reaction to the film he had made right before it: “I had just finished a film before Boatbuilders that was incredibly meaningful to me but was emotionally very difficult. It was about end of life care in a hospital in New York City. And I knew that I loved filmmaking, but I needed to pick another topic that would be playful and delightful.” That search led him back to a place from his childhood summers: “Maine is a place that I grew up going every summer, and I always just felt really good when I was there. I decided to try and find a story that would ask me to be there for a really long period of time. So I found the Brooklin Boatyard and shot with them for about 16 months. It was just a totally life-affirming, beautiful experience, and I’m hoping the film can give the audience the same thing I was craving, and I think many of us are.”

Trent, the yard’s project manager, emerges as one of the film’s most present figures, but Lorentzen is careful to frame him as part of a larger whole: “Trent stuck out from the very first day of being in Brooklin. He’s such a tender, sweet person, and he’s also just incredible at building things. But it’s really a film about community as well, and it’s not just about one person doing something. It’s about a whole collective of people who each have their own part of the project and can only finish the boat together.” That collective structure, he says, shaped the shoot and the edit alike: “It’s different from any other film I made, in that it’s really an ensemble of many people. Throughout the shooting I needed to really get to know all of the 60 people who work at the boatyard, and in the edit figure out how all of their personalities and the energy of their work together could come through, without it feeling like the film needed a core person to follow.”

Learning to look at the world like a boatbuilder

Asked about the almost hypnotic, meditative quality of some sequences, Lorentzen says it reflects exactly what he was chasing on set: “My goal was to live the story and to be there as much as possible. The yard welcomed me into their family, and I knew that over time that would work its way into the film. I was just looking for things that were satisfying or mesmerizing, things I couldn’t look away from, but not always knowing why.” That quality of attention, he explains, came directly from the boatbuilders’ own discipline: “I was trying to get into a headspace where I wasn’t overlooking things, where small little tensions or small little details mattered. And that really came from the boatbuilders: their job is to be incredibly detail oriented, and I learned how to look at the world through that perspective.”

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Liryc Dela Cruz, director of the short film A Brief Encounter, discusses his latest work at the International Critics Week section of the Venice Film Festival 2026. The film explores themes of trauma, tenderness, and human connection amid a backdrop of violence and digital detachment.

Dela Cruz explains that the story was inspired by a conversation about Filipino digital cleaners, highlighting the often unseen labor behind online footprints. The narrative centers on a woman who receives distressing news about loved ones’ suicides, but instead of dwelling on violence, the film emphasizes intimate gestures and human care. He emphasizes that the off-screen tragedies serve as a stark contrast to the gentle physical contact portrayed on screen, aiming to evoke empathy without explicit violence. The filmmaker also notes his intention to capture fleeting moments of connection that stand out amid a flood of violent images in contemporary media.

The director discusses his deliberate use of changing aspect ratios, shifting from color to black and white and from wide to square formats, to reflect the evolving nature of digital identities. He sees cinema as a collective experience that can produce profound emotional responses, especially when depicting moments of tenderness and joy often invisible in mainstream portrayals. Dela Cruz highlights his desire to offer viewers a different perspective—one that celebrates human pleasure and desire beyond suffering, challenging the Western tendency to fetishize poverty and pain. His aim is to create a space where viewers can see others as complex beings capable of feeling and self-determination.

Dela Cruz shares that he is working on a new feature titled Una festa peruviana, a love letter to Rome that explores the presence of bodies in the city’s landscape. Unlike his previous works rooted in his home country, this project reflects his current life in Italy and his interest in how bodies inhabit and reroute through space without invasion but through coexistence. He expresses enthusiasm for his upcoming film and hopes that his recent short, A Brief Encounter, will resonate with audiences by emphasizing subtlety and human connection in a time dominated by images of violence.

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