FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Faith Baloyi and Izel Bezuidenhout, actresses of the film Flatland.

Faith Baloyi is a policewoman that will bend her duties to help two women on the run; Izel Bezuidenhout is one of these two women and her run is also a first step towards liberation from an oppressive life, and from the law, of course. The two actresses talk with us about the preparation for their roles and the importance of the theme of female affirmation that underlies the thriller’s plot.

Flatland: Two young women are on the run through South Africa’s hinterland, hotly pursued by a policewoman who is trying to solve a murder case. A fast-paced road movie about female self-empowerment and a divided country.

The post Faith Baloyi, Izel Bezuidenhout – Flatland #Berlinale2019 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Camila Freitas, director of the film Chao.

Chao is a powerful and engaging documentary, about the landless workers in Brazil, who moved to deserted and abandoned lands to work them and live by the results of such work. Camila tells us how she worked on this project, how in the four years of the making she could understand reasons and needs of the landless workers and why their job is now even more important, facing the new Brazilian government just come to power.

Chao: Freitas crafts arresting images to portray the struggles of the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil. Activists occupy the grounds of a sugar cane factory in Goiás and begin to farm them: an exercise in ecological mixed cultivation and political utopia.

The post Camila Freitas – Chao #Berlinale2019 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Jenna Bass, director of the film Flatland.

Jenna Bass’s film has been the opening film of Panorama at Berlinale 69. The story of three women, completely different and forced to run and fight together in a western-based thriller was perfect for Jenna to convey the issue of female empowerment and female affirmation that the film strongly describes. A choice that came up while developing the film, as she tells us.

Flatland: Two young women are on the run through South Africa’s hinterland, hotly pursued by a policewoman who is trying to solve a murder case. A fast-paced road movie about female self-empowerment and a divided country.

The post Jenna Bass – Flatland #Berlinale2019 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Sarah Bradbury interviews Bas Devos, director of the film Hellhole.

Belgian director Bas Devos speaks to us about his second feature Hellhole which was five years in the making after his debut Violet. He told us about how Donald Trump’s labeling of the his home city as a “hellhole” inspired the name of the film, how he cast his the three central characters of his story: Hamza Belarbi as young Arab Mehdi, Alba Rohrwacher, an Italian translator at the European Parliament, and Willy Thomas as Wannes a Flemish doctor, and his desire to capture his impression of a fractured Brussels in the wake of the 2016 terror attacks. He also shared his reflections on Belgian cinema and the power of film to help us understand our current political climate.

Hellhole: Brussels is a lonely city in the episodic drama of Belgian director Bas Devos. The spirits of politics haunt the center of an increasingly fragile European Union. Between war and peace, camps for refugees and parliamentary debates, a group of lost souls is driven by the sharpening and blurring of life. There is the young Arab Medhi, who suffers from the circumstances of the time and is asked by his brother for a momentous favor. There is the Flemish doctor Wannes, whose son is on the way to a combat mission to the Middle East. And there is the Italian translator Alba, whose life threatens to slowly but surely slip away from her. These people are connected by the movements of a camera, which is increasingly becoming a protagonist. Their searches explore the cracks and breaks of the city, its houses and its inhabitants. Sometimes the images orbit the events, then again it is concentrated stasis, through which the film seeks to capture its spirits.

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PODCAST| Sarah Bradbury interviews Angela Schanelec, director of the film I Was At Home, But.

German director and screenwriter Angela Schanelec spoke to us about her film I Was At Home, But, including the inspiration behind the title, how she saw the central character Astrid, played by long-time collaborator, actress Maren Eggert, and how she went about searching for the just the right boy to play young Philip. She also talked us through her non-conventional filmmaking style which resists linear narrative, leaving a collage of images and moments for the audience to piece together and to find their own answers to the questions the film raises about existence and art. She also expressed how it was wonderful it was to have the film in competition in Berlin’s film festival where the movie and its actors are based.

I Was At Home, But: Astrid’s 13-year-old son Phillip returns wordlessly after he has disappeared for a week. Mother and teacher speculate that his disappearance may be related to the loss of the father. Only gradually does everyday life get going again. The questions Astrid faces make her look differently at her middle-class life and her job in Berlin’s cultural scene. Her concept of art is also changing. At home, it is becoming increasingly difficult for a single mother to accept that her son leads a life of her own. Then Phillip comes to the hospital with a blood poisoning. Worn between worry, failure and guilt, Astrid loses his nerve. But Phillip and his little sister do not turn away from her. The family structure decays. The camera always takes a step back, giving mother and children the space and time to rediscover their emotions. These scenes are framed by a classroom rehearsals on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the purchase of a broken bike and other loose storylines that resonate with each other.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Jonas Dassler, actor of the film The Golden Glove.

Jonas Dassler sits down with us and talks about arguably his most challenging role to date: becoming the serial killer Fritz Honka in Fatih Akin’s latest film The Golden Glove. The Golden Glove is a grotesque and relentless investigation on Fritz Honka’s abominable crimes and daily routine. Jonas Dassler manages to completely morph his 22 year-old self to introduce us a troubled and darkly comic character, the embodiment of an entire generation that just wanted to be forgotten.

The Golden Glove: Hamburg’s St. Pauli district in the 1970s is a neighbourhood of night-time entertainment and its nocturnal figures: habitual drinkers and prostitutes, gambling addicts and other lonely souls. Fritz Honka, a short man with thick horn-rimmed glasses and an unfortunate face, is one of them. An unskilled labourer, he picks up lonely older women, down-at-heel drinkers, in a local boozer called ‘Zum Goldenen Handschuh’ (The Golden Glove). Nobody realises that he batters and strangles these women in his attic apartment, then dismembers them and disposes of their remains behind the attic wall. Distributing scented air-fresheners throughout the building to disguise the stench of decay, he blames the neighbouring Greek family for the penetrating smells. Based on the true case of serial killer Fritz Honka and on Heinz Strunk’s 2016 crime novel, Fatih Akin has created a portrait of a socially depraved, violent criminal, driven by misogyny, sexual greed and sentimentality. Akin’s film is a social study of the flip side of the then recent economic miracle; it is about individuals thrown off-kilter by the war and post-war turmoil in a dark Germany wholly lacking in confidence.

To discover more about the film, click here.

The post Jonas Dassler – The Golden Glove #Berlinale2019 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Sarah Bradbury interviews Wang Xiaoshuai, director of the film So Long, My Son.

Chinese film director Wang Xiaoshuai spoke with us about the capturing three decades of his country’s history through a personal tale of loss in his film So Long, My Son. He shared how he worked with Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei, who play husband and wife, Yaojun and Liyun to elicit incredibly empathetic performances, his approach of using a non-chronological timeline and filming in a very naturalistic way and how the film explores grief, trauma but also leaves a sense of hope, set against the socio-economic evolution of China.

So Long, My Son: “We are waiting to grow old.” A bitter sentence summarizing the truth of life of Yaojun and his wife Liyun in a nutshell. Once upon a time, they were a happy family until their son drowned while playing at the dam of a dam. Yaojun and Liyun leave home, dive into the big city, where they know no one and they do not even understand the dialect of the inhabitants. Even adopted son Liu Xing does not bring the hoped for comfort. Defiantly he refuses the “foreign” parents and disappears one day completely. Time and again, the spouses are caught up in their memories and finally return to the place of lost hopes. The family drama encompasses three decades of Chinese history. The private and the political merge, the individual gets into the gear of a society in permanent change. Thus, the film leads from the emergence of the Cultural Revolution in the 1980s to the prosperous turbo-capitalism of the present, and at the same time it is time criticism and melodrama. In large tableaus, he makes the deep scars visible beneath the surface of a seemingly unbroken success story.

The post Wang Xiaoshuai – So Long, My Son #Berlinale2019 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews Hans Peter Molland, director of the film Out Stealing Horses.

Five years after In Order of Disappearance, Hans Peter Molland returns to Berlinale with his friend and protagonist Stellan Skarsgard by his side to present, in competition, Out Stealing Horses. Based on the 2007 novel by Norwegian author Per Petterson, the film follows the life of 67 years old Trond and his memories of a particular summer of his adolescence, in 1948. As Molland was defined by Skarsgard “the man of the wild nature” for his ability of shooting nature as it was another protagonist in the film, the director reveals that it’s because he grew up in a farm in Norway till he was 16 years old. Hans Peter Molland then goes on unveiling the secrets of the way he made the happenings in the film so real and tactile to get the audience completely involved in the story.

Out Stealing Horses: November 1999: 67-year-old Trond (Stellan Skarsgard), lives in self-imposed isolation and looks forward to welcoming in the new millennium alone. As winter arrives he meets one of his few neighbours, Lars (Bjorn Floberg), and realises he knew him back in the summer of 1948. 1948 – the year Trond turned 15. The summer Trond grew up.

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PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Xavier Böhm, director of the film O Beautiful Night.

Xavier Böhm is here at the Berlinale with his debut feature O Beautiful Night which will be screened within Panorama’s official selection. An alluring and visually charming film, O Beautiful Night proves to be a great beginning for the young German director whose aim is to prove Germany’s cinema wrong by creating films that sit comfortably between “fun and meaningful”.

O Beautiful Night: A raven chases Juri into the clutches of a mysterious man who claims to be Death himself. For Juri, a somnambulistic odyssey begins which sends him through bright labyrinths of go-kart tracks, opium dens and chandeliers.

The post Xavier Böhm – O Beautiful Night #Berlinale2019 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews Teona Strugar Mitevska, director of the film God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya.

Petrunya is not only the protagonist of Teona Strugar Mitevska’s film God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya, in competition at the 69th Berlinale. Petrunya also represents every woman nowadays: imperfect, struggling in a masculine culture and a macho society such as the macedonian one, trying to find her place in the world and redefine her role in society. Teona Strugar Mitevska reveals how real happenings inspired her to write this story and how she decided to use a mix of tones as to generate a dramedy that could highlight all the bittersweet moments composing Petrunya’s adventure. Zorica Nusheva playing Petrunya in the film is absolutely perfect in the part and she could hope for a best actress award at the Berlinale.

God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya: In Stip, a small town in Macedonia, every January the local priest throws a wooden cross into the river and hundreds of men dive after it. Good fortune and prosperity are guaranteed to the man who retrieves it. This time, Petrunya dives into the water on a whim and manages to grab the cross before the others. Her competitors are furious – how dare a woman take part in their ritual? All hell breaks loose, but Petrunya holds her ground. She won her cross and will not give it up.

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