FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews James Gray, director of the film Armageddon Time.

At the 14th Rome International Film Festival, James Gray talks about Armageddon Time, his autobiographical film, out in Italian Cinemas from March 23rd with Universal Pictures. The director wrote the film with the help of his brother as he’s the one remembering every single detail of their childhood.

Armageddon Time: From acclaimed filmmaker James Gray, Armageddon Time is a deeply personal story on the strength of family, the complexity of friendship and the generational pursuit of the American Dream. The film features an all-star cast including Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews the director Jaco Van Dormael.

Jaco Van Dormael, protagonist of Europe, Now! at the 41st Bergamo Film Meeting talks about his cinema and the complete retrospective of his works the festival has organized. The festival will also present the 4K restored version of his first film, Toto le héros that will come back to italian cinemas from April 17th thanks to I WONDER CLASSICS. The director shares with us his memories from that Festival De Cannes of 1991 where he presented Toto le héros to the cinema world.

Jaco Van Dormael (Ixelles, Belgium, 1957) He’s a director, screenwriter and producer. Raised between Germany and Belgium, Van Dormael first developed a passion for theatre, which accompanied him throughout his artistic career. At the age of eighteen, he took up clowning and became a director of children’s shows. After studying film at Louis-Lumière in Paris and INSAS in Brussels, he wrote and directed his first short documentary and fiction films in the early 1980s. The best known, È pericoloso sporgersi (1984), is the story of a child who experiences two possible versions of his future. The short film won the Grand Prix at the Clermont-Ferrand festival, revealing Van Dormael’s experimental, non-linear, dreamlike and visionary narrative style, his predilection for childhood characters and themes, and his near-obsession in depicting the complexity of life, caught between choices and destiny, between limitations and possibilities. Success with audiences and critics came in 1991 with his first feature film, Toto le héros (Toto the hero at the end of the millennium), in which old Totò is convinced he’s been swapped with his neighbour as a baby and is determined to take revenge for having been robbed of his actual life. On its debut at Cannes, the film won the Caméra d’Or, followed by a César and four European Film Awards. In 1996, he presented Le Huitième Jour (The Eighth Day), a Palme d’Or at Cannes for the two leads – Daniel Auteuil and Pascal Duquenne – who portray on screen a unique friendship that develops between an ordinary man and a boy with Down Syndrome. At the core of the film is another theme that runs through Van Dormael’s filmography, i.e. physical and mental disability, always portrayed respectfully and sympathetically. Several years later, Van Dormael directed Mr. Nobody (2009), starring Jared Leto and Sarah Polley and winner of the Best Screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival. Picking up on the subject of the “alternative” lives of È pericoloso sporgersi (in fact, all of Van Dormael’s films refer to each other), he portrays a hypothetical future where Nemo Nobody, the last of mortals and the world’s oldest man, retraces all the possible versions of his past, in a tangle of lives lived or imagined, conditioned by individual choices and chance. Van Dormael’s fourth feature film, Le tout nouveau testament (The Brand New Testament) came out in 2015. A surreal comedy where a despotic and violent God torments and controls the destinies of humans through an old computer, the film premiered at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes to critical acclaim, was a box-office success and won four Magritte Awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Jaco Van Dormael is not a prolific author, accustomed as he is to developing his scripts over the years, reworking ideas and suggestions collected in notes accumulated day by day. More than a decade has passed between one film and the next, even if interspersed with a few shorts and theatrical plays. From such perspective, Bovary (2021), his latest work, represents an anomaly: born from a stage adaptation of Flaubert’s novel and written by Michael De Cock, artistic director of the Royal Flemish Theater in Brussels. The original play was to be performed live but was cancelled due to the pandemic. To deliver it to an audience, Van Dormael agreed to shoot in a very short time and bring it to life on the screen: “In five days, I tried to make something that is neither film nor theatre”, making extensive use of back projection and extended close-ups or resorting to other cinematic gimmicks. An experiment born out of an emergency situation, which nevertheless allowed Van Dormael to combine, for once, his passion for cinema and the stage.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Michaela Pavlátová, director and animator.

At the 41st edition of Bergamo Film Meeting, Czech director and animator Michaela Pavlátová is the protagonist of the section dedicated to auteur animation. The director reveals how she’s surprised and honored that the Festival organized a world premiere of her complete works consisting of 25 titles, including shorts and features, and two live-action films. Pavlátová then tells us more about when and why she began working in the animation field and what is the fil rouge that connects her works.

Michaela Pavlátová (Prague, 1961) graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in 1987. In the same year, as an end-of-study film, she made her first 2D animated short – a recurring technique in her filmography – Etuda z alba (An Etude from an Album) in which, with spare traits and light-hearted humour, the stylistic and thematic characteristics that will recur in her filmography are already noticeable. Řeči, řeči, řeči (Words, Words, Words, 1991) is a visual representation of the thoughts and speeches that hover in a bar full of people: the creativity and originality with which Pavlátová depicts an ordinary scenario earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short in 1993. From this point onwards, Pavlátová achieved such recognition and acclaim that she became, to all intents and purposes, the most internationally recognised animation director of the new generation, earning the praise of critics and audiences alike. With Repete (Repeat, 1995), thanks to the combination of compositional refinement and sarcasm, enhanced by pastel drawing animation, Pavlátová won two significant awards: the Special Prize of the Jury at the International Animation Festival in Annecy and the Golden Bear for Best Short Film in Berlin. From 1998 to 2002, she split her time between Prague and San Francisco, where she worked as an art director for the animation studio Wildbrain Inc. In 2003, she directed her first live-action feature film, Nevěrné hry (Faithless Games), reflecting on the dynamics of couples and the search for marital harmony. At the same time, she confirmed her versatility by continuing to produce animated shorts; in 2008, she directed her second fiction feature film Děti noci (Night Owls), presented at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where it won the awards for best male and female performances. Some of Pavlátová’s films also have an erotic component, sometimes shown in a suggestive manner, other times more explicitly but never vulgar: these include Karneval zvířat (The Carnival of the Animals, 2006) or Tram (2012), which won the Cristal award at Annecy and the Special International Jury Prize at the Hiroshima International Animation Festival for its ingenious and ironic presentation of female erotic fantasies. In 2021 she directed My Sunny Maad, the first animated feature film that, maintaining its typical spare but elegant traits, puts aside black humour to portray a very timely story of conquering freedom and one’s rights through the eyes of a European woman who, for love, moves to Kabul. Michaela Pavlátová currently teaches animation at the prestigious FAMU – Academy of Performing Arts, Film and TV School in Prague, but has also held courses at the Academy of Art College, Computer Arts Institute in San Francisco, Harvard University and VSUP – Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague. She has also been a member of international juries at prestigious film festivals.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Ursula Meier, director of the film Ursula Meier’s retrospective.

Bergamo Film Meeting reconnaissance of contemporary European cinema on its 41st edition will focus on the works of Ursula Meier (France – Switzerland) – which straddle the thin borderline between fiction and documentary – masterfully analyse the profound ambivalence of emotional ties. These are the words through which the Festival has described the French director. Ursula Meier comments on the homage to her work the 41st Bergamo Film Meeting has organized and talks about the fil rouge that connect all her films, from Home (2008) to the latest one, La Ligne.

Ursula Meier’s retrospective: Ursula Meier is a director and screenwriter. She often navigates the thin borderline between fiction and documentary, analysing with great skill the profound ambivalence of emotional ties. Growing up in eastern France, near the Swiss border, she studied film and television production in Belgium at the IAD – Institut des Arts de Diffusion and began working as an assistant to Alain Tanner in the second half of the 1990s. Her diploma film, Le Songe d’Isaac, and the subsequent Des Heures sans sommeil (1998), won the special jury prize at the Festival international du court métrage de Clermont-Ferrand and the International Grand Prix at the Toronto Film Festival, and allowed her to devote herself to cinema full time. In 2001, she directed the short film Tous à table – about a group of friends who meet at a special birthday dinner – which won the audience award at Clermont-Ferrand. After two documentaries, Autour de Pinget (2000) – a tribute to the work of the writer Robert Pinget – and Pas les flics, pas les noirs, pas les blancs (2002) – on the extraordinary story of Alain Devegney, deputy sergeant of the Geneva gendarmerie – she directed Des épaules solides (2003), produced for the ARTE series “Masculin-Féminin/Petite Caméra”, achieving great success with the public and a nomination for the Swiss Film Prize. The film tells the story of Sabine, a talented young athlete who wants to pursue a professional sports career and pushes her body to extreme limits. Her first feature film was Home, starring Isabelle Huppert, in 2008, in which she recounts the vicissitudes of a family living in a remote cottage near a closed motorway, which, to their surprise and concern, is about to be reopened, with all the unpleasant consequences imaginable. The film was presented during the International Critics’ Week at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and received a nomination for the 2009 César Awards in the Best First Feature category and was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Production Design. In 2012, with L’Enfant d’en haut (Sister), the story of siblings Simon and Louise, she received a special mention for the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and represented Switzerland in the nominations for the 2013 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film; she also received a nomination at the 2013 Lumière Awards for Best Francophone Film and one at the 2013 Independent Spirit Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2014, she was among the 13 directors who created the collective film The Bridges of Sarajevo, shot on the occasion of the WWI 100th anniversary and presented at the Cannes Film Festival; her segment, Tišina Mujo, takes place during a football practice in the Zetra stadium, where little Mujo misses a penalty kick by sending the ball over the fence. She then made Kacey Mottet Klein, Naissance d’un acteur (2015), a short film which documents the physical and professional growth of the young actor starring in her two previous films, and Ondes de choc – journal de ma tête (2018), a feature film with Fanny Ardant, in which a young man kills his parents after sending his secret diary to his French teacher. La ligne (The invisible line, 2022), the story of three sisters, a mother and a forced distance, is Meier’s latest work presented in competition at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival starring Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. The film recounts the dynamics of an atypical family, in which it’s space that defines affections and relationships.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Hannah Gross, Michael Cera, Sophia Lillis, director of the film The Adults.

 Hannah Gross, Michael Cera and Sophia Lillis talk about the journey they’ve been on, between childhood memories and real life, thanks to The Adults by Dustin Guy Defa. The film, screening in the Encounters section at the 73rd Berlinale, sees the actors playing a brother and his two sisters on the difficult path to become “adults” in every responsible sense of the word.

The Adults: A brief trip back home turns into a longer stay as Eric (Michael Cera) finds himself caught between catching up with his two sisters and conquering his old poker group. The longer Eric extends his visit so he can leave his mark as the best poker player in town, the harder it becomes to avoid unearthing the tumultuous relationship with his sister Rachel (Hannah Gross). As their little sister Maggie (Sophia Lillis) attempts to recreate the intimate world the three of them once shared, Eric and Rachel are faced with the divide between their childhood selves and the adults they are now.

To discover more about the Berlin International Film Festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Simon Baker, actor of the film Limbo.

Simon Baker, one of the lead characters in the film Limbo by Ivan Sen, in the Competition section at Berlinale 73, talks about the different narrative layers of the film, the bending of the cold case genre to a more dramatic and intimate story, his approach to the character and his future work as a film director, again.

Limbo: Detective Travis Hurley arrives in a small town in the Australian outback. The Hotel Limbo, which resembles a rocky grotto, proves to be perfect for his very own particular type of relaxation. But he has come here to investigate a case from 20 years ago for which the only evidence is a number of tape recordings: the unsolved murder of an Aboriginal girl named Charlotte Hayes. The residents are less than forthcoming regarding the provision of information; this is especially true of the victim’s fractured family. You do not talk to a cop, especially if he is white. But Hurley, in a stoic performance by Simon Baker, knows how to wend his way in his cool car through the labyrinthine landscape of the Opal Mountains and form a bond with the cave and caravan dwellers.

To discover more about the Berlin International Film Festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, directors of the film Femme.

Sam H. Freeman and NgChoon Ping deliver an outstanding movie with Femme, in Panorana at Berlinale 73. In this talk we analyse the issues of homophobia , heterophobia and toxic masculinity , going deep into explaining the mission the film has and the formal construction of it, that makes it one of the most surprising feature s of the whole festival.

Femme: With his performances as Aphrodite Banks, Jules has a place among London’s celebrated drag artists. One night after a show, he steps out to get some cigarettes and is brutally attacked by a guy out with a gang of blokes. Although Jules is able to recover physically, he withdraws from the outside world, traumatised. Months later, he recognises his attacker by chance in a gay sauna. Without make-up and wrapped only in a towel, Jules is able to approach the other man incognito and find out who he is. He begins an affair with the closeted homosexual Preston in order to take his revenge.

To discover more about the Berlin International Film Festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Tian Xiaopeng, director of the film Deep Sea.

Tian Xiaopeng creates with Deep Sea, in the generation Kplus section at Berlinale 73, a magic blend in stunning visuals and hyper-colourful images. He tells us the path that lead to this creation and the ideas behind the stpry of a young girl that deals with death and memories.

Deep Sea: Shenxiu has felt a deep sadness since her mother left the family. Awaking after a storm at sea, she finds herself in a kaleidoscopic, dreamlike world of swirling colour and cascading water, vividly realised in 3D animation. Guided by a many-eyed creature, the Hyjinx, she embarks on a quest to locate the Eye of the Deep Sea where she hopes to meet her mother again. She is accompanied by the wildly experimental chef and ship’s captain Nanhe whose restaurant under the ocean has fallen on hard times. To pay off his debts, he seeks a way to revive his signature soup dish, despite a scarcity of ingredients. It will take all of Shenxiu’s courage to brave the feared Red Phantom and weather the darkest storms, never losing sight of life’s bright moments.

To discover more about the Berlin International Film Festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Wu Lang, director of the film Absence.

Wu Lang narrates a story of redemption and coming back, in his film Absence, in the Encounters section of Berlinale 73. He motivates his choices and his overlook on the human relationships and the interaction with man and nature and modernity, in this talk with Angelo Acerbi.

Absence: As Han Jiangyu focuses his attention on the dead fish and the lobsters slowly dying on the grill, he asks his childhood friend Kei if the animals have a soul. Kei’s business is booming. The island of Hainan, to which Jiangyu has returned after ten years in prison, has changed dramatically. It has become a flagship site of intensive housing construction – and therefore also a paradise for rip-offs and fraud. Jiangyu also meets his old love again. She now has a daughter. Could the girl be his?

To discover more about the Berlin International Film Festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Felia Allum, curator of the Donne di Mafia Film Festival.

Felia Allum, curator of the Donne di Mafia Film festival unveils the program of the third edition of this mini festival organised by CinemaItaliaUK and sponsored by Jacobacci & Associati and the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies, University of Bath. The third edition of this Mini film festival ‘Donne di Mafia, having a voice returns at the Garden Cinema, in London and will be showing two features, Una femmina, The Code of Silence (2022) and Prima Donna, The girl from tomorrow (2022) plus a short film, Stay Behind (2022) over the course to the weekend.

Mini film festival ‘Donne di Mafia, having a voice’ returns for its third year at the Garden Cinema, in London Organised by CinemaItaliaUK and sponsored by Jacobacci & Associati and  the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies, University of Bath, Donne di Mafia  film festival will take place at the Garden Cinema on 4 – 5 March 2023. Two features and a short film will be shown over the course to the weekend. The two features address the question of women in the Calabrian and Sicilian mafia contexts, while the short film proposes a different reading of events of post-war Italy, mafia, secret services and politics.

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