FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Jo Mühlberger, deputy managing director of European Film Promotion.

A conversation with Jo Mühlberger, deputy managing director of European Film Promotion, about this year’s edition of its long-standing Producers on the Move program. European Film Promotion is an international promotion organization and a unique network of 38 national film promotion institutes, who represent films and talent from their respective territories. Producers on the Move is its long-standing program that promotes promising producers and fosters international co-productions. While the program normally takes place during the Cannes Film Festival, this year, it will be held online on May 17-21, in response to the pandemic. Mühlberger talks about how it will work and about some of the topics that will be discussed during the course of this year’s edition.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Farbod Ardebili, director of the film Forbidden to See Us Scream in Tehran.

A conversation with filmmaker Farbod Ardebili about his award-winning short film Forbidden to See Us Scream in Tehran, a film set in the underground metal scene of Iran. In this interview, Ardebili discusses metal in his native country and why it is dangerous to perform it there. He also talks about the challenges of making this film, particularly having lived in exile in the United States for several years, which forced him to direct the movie in the streets of Tehran via the aid of WhatsApp.

Forbidden to See Us Scream in Tehran: The frontwoman for an Iranian death metal band risks everything as she plots to call the cops on her own underground concert in the hopes that the raid will help her secure her asylum in another country.

The post Farbod Ardebili – Forbidden to See Us Scream in Tehran appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Mohamed El Aboudi, director of the film School of Hope.

A conversation with Mohamed El Aboudi, director of a new documentary called School of Hope. The film premiered at Hot Docs in Toronto and is part of this year’s program of this year’s Munich DOK.fest, where it received the SOS Children’s Village Award ahead of the festival. The film documents a fading nomadic tribe in the Moroccan desert and the challenge of literacy and education in such an unforgiving landscape. In this film, El Aboudi talks about connecting with the environment and how in School of Hope, the theme of education is inseparable from the climate change situation. He also talks about finding poetry in the Moroccan desert, connecting with the Oulad Boukais tribe and more.

School of Hope: In the expansive desert east of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, where seasonal rain and snow once supported livestock and nomadic traditions, an extended drought caused by the climate crisis never seems to end. Despite generating a tiny carbon footprint, the Oulad Boukais tribe deal with the threat of environmental collapse every day. So, to ensure their children’s future, they establish a school. Shot over three years, this optimistic story emphasizes potential, opportunity and improvement over the harsh realities of unemployment, illiteracy, loss of tradition and desertification and accentuates the positives—the children’s excitement to learn, an altruistic teacher’s exuberance to teach and a community’s adaptation to change. Along with students Mohamed, Miloud and Fatima, the desert itself is a character, communicating its vastness, endurance and power, with powerful cinematic pacing and style, as both a lesson and motivation for both the tribe and the film’s audience. 

The post Mohamed El Aboudi – School of Hope #HotDocs21 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Annabel Verbeke, director of the film Four Seasons in a Day.

A conversation with Annabel Verbeke, director of a new documentary called Four Seasons in a Day, screening at Hot Docs in Toronto this year. The film observes and explores the human aspect of the post-Brexit situation over the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and reflects on the theme of borders at large. In this interview, Verbeke talks about her interest in this theme, connecting with the environment, how she chose the people to film, and more.

Four Seasons in a Day: Each day, the Carlingford ferry brings people over the border between Northern-Ireland and Ireland, in an era the debate on Brexit is predominant. Staying or remaining, both options create the same big question marks on the future. The short journey over the wide sea brings different thoughts and reflections to the surface, while the border is hiding in the sea. The film creates a kaleidoscopic narrative based on how people’s daily lives and thoughts relate to this imaginary line. How visible would the borderline eventually become?

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Jonas Bak, director of the film Wood and Water.

A conversation with Jonas Bak, director of Wood and Water, which premiered in Berlin earlier this year and also screened as part of New York’s New Directors/New Films 2021 program. This is a cross-cultural film about a retired woman traveling to Hong Kong to reunited with her son, as tensions arise during the Hong Kong protest. In this interview, Bak talks about playing with the bounds of reality and fiction, including casting his own mother in the lead role of Wood and Water. He also talks about his personal reaction to the Hong Kong protests, the beauty of slow cinema that this film represents, using Brian Eno music to enrich the visuals and more.

Wood and Water: With seamless grace, German director Jonas Bak moves from the tall spires of the Black Forest to the teeming skyscrapers of Hong Kong in his tranquil, deeply moving feature debut. Newly retired from her church job, Anke dreams of spending time with her grown children—including her uncommunicative and elusive son, Max, who has been living for years in Hong Kong, and who is unable to join his mother and sister back in Germany due to the ongoing pro-democracy protests. In a daring decision, Anke, though suffering from depression and anxiety, travels to Hong Kong to find Max and perhaps also herself. In his hushed, wholly original approach to this fish-out-of-water set-up, Bak constructs a gentle, ambiguous fable of becoming, shot on 16mm and featuring a wondrous, naturalistic performance by his own mother, Anke Bak.

The post Jonas Bak – Wood and Water #NDNF appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Tuija Halttunen, director of the film How to Kill a Cloud.

A conversation with Tuija Halttunen, director of How to Kill a Cloud, presented at CPH:DOX. The film talks about a Finnish female scientist trying to create rain in the United Arab Emirates desert and touches on the ethical questions this raises, also by looking at its bureaucracy. In this conversation, Halttunen talks about her fascinating with clouds, how she was able to gain such insight on this topic and more.

How to Kill a Cloud: Hannele Korhonen has sky-high ambitions. When the Finnish scientist receives 1.5 million USD from the United Arab Emirates for a project, she sees the opportunity to give her vision a try and bring about the impossible: to make it rain in the desert. Science and technology are, in fact, in the process of interfering with nature’s order and inducing artificial rain over the arid but very wealthy oil state. But on the other side of the laudatory speeches, Hannele gradually sees that her generous sponsors are harbouring their own agendas. Politics and research are hard to separate, and soon the scientist from the far north is faced with an ethical dilemma, heralded by the quote by Goethe at the beginning of Tuija Halttunen’s highly topical film. Has Hannele, in fact, entered into a Faustian pact and put her scientific integrity at risk? And should we really tinker with ecosystems on such a large scale? She is not the only person who has to confront the diabolical dilemma at a time when research based on private funds is gaining ground.

The post Tuija Halttunen – How to Kill a Cloud #cphdox appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Sadri Cetinkaya and Venla Varha,  co-director and co-editor/co-writer of the film Lost Boys.

A conversation with Sadri Cetinkaya and Venla Varha, respectively co-director and co-writer/coeditor, of Lost Boys, screening at the 2021 CPH:DOX. They describe the film as a hybrid documentary, which blends narrative and real footage, and talks about a man’s search for his friends who go missing in Cambodia. The film is a standalone sequel to the 2010 film Raindeerspotting and Cetinkaya says it took them ten years to work on it. He also talks about the strong style of the film, the aforementioned blending of reality and fiction and more.

Lost Boys: Three Finnish friends set out on a trip to Thailand and Cambodia in Lost Boys, a dark and controversial film that starts out as a video diary and continues as a murder mystery. Jani and Antti have been in prison for years. When they are released, they travel with their friend Joonas to Thailand to celebrate their freedom in a dark and self-destructive frenzy of sex and hard drugs. Joonas films it all. But it all ends in disaster. He loses touch with the other two in Cambodia, and in a wild twist, he is suddenly trying to solve a murder in the city’s neon-coloured underworld.

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