FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Niklas Pollmann interviews Jacqueline Lentzou, director of the film Moon, 66 Questions.

Niklas is talking with Greek director Jacqueline Lentzou about her sensual and visually stunning debut Moon, 66 Questions, the enactment of multiple sclerosis in her film, the expressibility of lacks/absences and why the film is not first and foremost a feminist work.

Moon, 66 Questions: the 24-years-old upper class Greek girl Artemis is coming back to her Greek home to help her father and his sudden onset of multiple sclerosis. Therein Artemis find out a family secret and her own way to deal with it.

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PODCAST | Niklas Pollmann interviews Anne Zohra Berrached, director of the film Copilot.

Niklas is talking with Anne Zohra Berrached about her third feature film Copilot,  the passive perspective of love, its narrative difficulties and implications, such as interpersonal and political.

Copilot: the German-Turkish researcher deeply falls in love with the Lebanese student Saeed during the Mid90s in Hamburg, Germany. Asli tries to prevent him from radicalizing in his islamic beliefs and wants him to fight for his dream to become a pilot.

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PODCAST | This interview is about director and screenwriter Kantarama Gahigiri, selected for this year edition of Berlinale Talents 2021.

Kantarama is an award winning filmmaker. She writes and directs films set in East Africa, Switzerland and the United States. Her first feature film “Tapis Rouge” has been screened and awarded worldwide including TV5Monde Best Feature Film at Geneva International Film Festival (2014) and Best Directing at Chelsea Film Festival (New York) in 2015, followed by a national theatrical release in France, May 2017.

In 2018 she became one of the 5 residents for the 3rd Edition at “Realness – An African Screenwriter’s Residency” selected after evaluation of more than 130 projects from the whole continent. Following the residency, Kantarama was invited as a delegate to the Atlas Workshops (Marrakech International Film Festival) in December 2018.

The other films she directed garnered praise and won awards internationally. Including: 2 seasons of the short TV series Me+U, a comedy she created and directed. And the short video Pinot In The Grass which won the Award of Merit – Special Mention at Los Angeles IndieFEST 2014.

Since 2014, she also teaches directing, writing & producing workshops to help younger artists implement their work (in Rwanda, Brazil, Switzerland, Tunisia, Kenya, Tanzania and Malaysia).

In 2004, Kantarama was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and a Swiss Benevolent Scholarship.

As a freelance producer, she has been working on various films, TV and commercials in Uganda, Rwanda and the United States.

To discover more about Berlinale Talents, click here.

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PODCAST | This interview is about music composer Tomás Barreiro, selected for this year edition of Berlinale Talents 2021.

Tomás Barreiro (b. 1976) is a composer, orchestrator, interpreter and teacher, with more than 15 years of experience in the cinematographic medium. His portfolio includes TV shows, theater, advertising, and over 20 feature films, both mexican and international productions. Some of the prizes and nominations he has received throughout his career include: Ariel and Fénix Prizes, Berlinale, Toronto International Film Festival and Chicago International Film Festival, among others.

Besides his distinguished trajectory as a film composer, Barreiro has an active participation in concert music. His work has been awarded in very prestigious composition contests around the world. He received the 2012 Sayat Nova Composition Award; and in 2008, the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award, whose jury included the well known composer Steve Reich. His compositions have been premiered in different countries around the world, including: France, United States, Poland and Japan.

From the beginning of his career as a film composer, Barreiro has worked in relevant mexican productions, such as: Güeros (Ariel, 2014), Museo (Berlinale, 2018) and Verde (Luminus, 2016), from director Alonso Ruizpalacios, with whom he has closely collaborated since 2008. He also scored Alejandra Márquez Abella’s Las niñas bien (Ariel, 2018) and Bruno Santamaría’s first two feature films: Margarita (FICG, 2016) and Cosas que no hacemos (CIFF, 2020). Most recently, Barreiro has expanded his career to Latin America and the United States, with productions like Bad Hombres (United States, 2020) a documentary directed by Andrew Glazer, and Jezabel (Venezuela, 2021) by Hernán Jabes.

Tomás Barreiro is currently a member of Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, a program that reunites Mexico’s most distinguished artists. He is also a teacher at the Panamerican University in Mexico City, and Hidalgo State’s National Music School, where he teaches film scoring to graduate and undergraduate students.

To discover more about Berlinale Talents, click here.

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PODCAST | This interview is about writer and director J.J. Neepin, selected for this year edition of Berlinale Talents 2021.

JJ Neepin is an Indigenous writer & director and is a member of the Fox Lake Cree Nation. JJ has written, directed and produced several short films alongside her sister/partner/producer; Justina Neepin with their company JJNeepinFilms INC. They made their first short film MARK in 2012 and had its world premiere at the 2013 Gimli Film Festival in Manitoba.

To discover more about Berlinale Talents, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Hadas ben Aroya, director of the film All Eyes Off Me.

A conversation with Hadas ben Aroya, director of All Eyes Off Me, presented in the Encounters section of the 2021 Berlinale International Film Festival. The film is an exploration of sexual fantasies, intimacy and love in the modern world. In this interview, the director talks with us about her interest in the topic and how she likes to integrate the things she loves in her works. We also talk about some of the defining traits of the style of All Eyes Off Me, including the structure that is split into three parts, as well as the intimacy of the extended sex scenes and more.

All Eyes Off Me: Danny is pregnant by Max but she doesn’t get around to telling him at a party. Meanwhile, Max is busy trying out his girlfriend Avishag’s sexual fantasies with her. She wants him to hit her when they have sex. Avishag takes her bruises over to Dror, whose dog she sits. A familiarity develops between the older man and the young woman that neither of them expected.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Samaher Alqadi, director of the film As I Want.

A conversation with Samaher Alqadi, director of As I Want, from the Encounters section of the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival. This is a powerful documentary about the explosion of politically charged sexual terrorism against women that swept through Cairo’s Tahrir Square in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. In this interview, Alqadi shares her testimony of those days and offers her thoughts on what motivates such violence against women. She also talks about her own journey in making the movie and her use of the camera as a weapon for self-protection.

As I Want: Cairo, January 25, 2013. A string of severe sexual assaults takes place in Tahrir Square on the day of the second anniversary of the revolution. In response, a huge crowd of enraged women surges onto the streets. Samaher Alqadi joins them, taking her camera with her as protection but also to document the protests of a burgeoning women’s rebellion. She has no idea where the story will take her. Samaher’s filming coincides with her falling pregnant, and this prompts her to consider her childhood in Palestine and what it means to be a woman and a mother. She begins an imaginary conversation with her own mother, who dies before she can see her one last time. In an intimate inner dialogue that guides us through the narrative, Samaher starts to form the words that are left unsaid and to share her deepest secrets. She goes on a traumatic visit back to her parent’s house in Ramallah where she conjures up and confronts dark memories of the childhood she has managed to escape. Meanwhile, the struggle in Egypt continues and, even after the birth of her son, Samaher still finds herself on the frontline. As I Want is a crucial, hard-hitting political document, an essay film and an inward journey in which individual emancipation is linked to the collective process of liberation in the Arab world.

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PODCAST | Niklas Pollmann interviews Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, director of the film Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy.

Niklas is talking with Ryūsuke Hamaguchi about his first film in Berlinale Main Competition, focussing on filming under the conditions of COVID-19, Japanese cinema and the borders between commercial and Indie cinema as well as his cinematic philosophy between formalism and spontaneity, Hong Sang-Soo and Cassavetes and making a cinema about narration itself.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy: A compilation of three short stories about love, solitude and the value of fiction. The first episode a love triangle with two actress friends and a rich businessman. The second is about a woman that tries to trick an erotic novelist into a honey-trap. The third is about a reencounter of two middle-aged women and its homo-erotical implications.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Dan Stevens and Maren Eggert, actors of the film I’m your man.

In Maria Schrader’s new film I’m your man, screening at the 71st Berlinale in competition, Maren Eggert and Dan Stevens play respectively a scientist and a robot made exactly for her as part of a new experiment she has to evaluate. The at first awkward situation becomes slowly an occasion for the film and its audience to wonder about the meaning of love, relationship and the rules of attraction. The two actors elaborate on the film’s themes and reveal the lesson they learned from this experience.

I’m your man: Alma (Maren Eggert) is a scientist at the famous Pergamon Museum in Berlin. In order to obtain research funds for her work, she is persuaded to participate in an extraordinary study. For three weeks, she has to live with a humanoid robot tailored to her character and needs, whose artificial intelligence is designed to be the perfect life partner for her. Alma meets Tom (Dan Stevens), a machine in human form in a class of its own, created solely to make her happy. I’m your man is a playful comic-tragic tale about the questions of love, longing and what makes a human being human.

To discover more about the 71st edition of Berlin International Film Festival, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Gustavo Pizzi, director of the series The Last Days of Gilda.

A conversation with Gustavo Pizzi, director of the series The Last Days of Gilda, presented in the Berlinale Series section of the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival. The series revolves around a free and independent woman named Gilda living on the edge of the favelas, and the growing hostilities between her and the reactionary Christians that begin to become a powerful and imposing presence of her territory. In this interview, Pizzi discusses how the series reflects the current socio-political sitiation of Brazil but also speaks about the timelessness that it evokes. He also shares his thoughts on the current state of the art in Brazil in the times of Bolsonaro and whether there is something he finds particularly stimulating about the series structure, as opposed to the more traditional feature film structure.

The Last Days of Gilda: Gilda loves cooking, men and life. She is a free woman who knows exactly what she wants and how to satisfy her hunger for love, noisy passion and boisterous celebrations. But in her neighbourhood on the edge of a favela in Rio de Janeiro, reactionary Christians are rapidly gaining the upper hand, and her unbridled way of life, self-confidence and independence do not go down well with everyone. At first, the graffiti on the façade of her small house barely bothers optimistic Gilda, but her little world between chickens and pigs is becoming ever more constricted.

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