FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Nicolas Champeaux, director of the documentary The State Against Mandela and the Others.

Director Nicolas Champeaux presented his documentary feature film The State Against Mandela and the Others at the 40th edition of the Cairo International Film Festival in Egypt. The film draws from the extensive audio archive of the 1963 Rivonia trial of Nelson Mandela, with a special focus on the other fellow defendants of Mandela and others touched by the trial via interviews. In this interview, we talk about the archive and the challenge of representing it via animation, prompted by the fact that no visual footage of the trials was recorded. But we also discuss how history is often told. One of the main objectives of this documentary is in fact to tell the story of “the others,” who were involved in the trial with Mandela but are also often forgotten.

The State Against Mandela and the Others: 2018 marks the centenary of Nelson Mandela’s birth. He seized centre stage during a historic trial in 1963 and 1964. But there were eight others who, like him, faced the death sentence. They too were subjected to pitiless cross-examinations. To a man they stood firm and turned the tables on the state: South Africa’s apartheid regime was in the dock. Recently recovered sound archives of those hearings transport us back into the thick of the courtroom battles.

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The post Nicolas Champeaux – The State Against Mandela and the Others #CIFF40 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Nosipho Dumisa, director of the film Number 37.

Director Nosipho Dumisa presented her feature directorial debut, Number 37, at the 40th edition of the Cairo International Film Festival in Egypt. A thriller with Hitchcockian vibes and a desire to represent an underrepresented truth about the rougher side of Cape Town, South Africa, Number 37 was part of the Midnight Screening strand here in Cairo but has enough energy and tension to keep you awake the whole night. The filmmaker tells us about her love of genre and the power it has to communicate, shares with us a little of her experience working on her feature directorial debut and the journey and more.

Number 37: Entrapped in his apartment, Randal Hendricks, a recent paraplegic, is given a gift of binoculars by his devoted girlfriend, Pam. But he is in financial debt to Emmie, a sadistic loan shark, and when he witnesses a powerful gangster, named Lawyer, commit murder while observing his neighbors through his binoculars, he initiates a dangerous blackmail scheme in an attempt to settle his debt.

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The post Nosipho Dumisa – Number 37 #CIFF40 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Peter Greenaway, Faten Hamama Honorary Award winner.

Peter Greenaway received the prestigious Faten Hamama Honorary Award during the opening ceremony of the 40th edition of the Cairo International Film Festival. We sat down to talk with the great filmmaker of such films as The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, The Pillow-Book and Nightwatching, honoured for in Cairo in appreciation of his bright, distinguished and international artistic career. On this interview, we start off by asking a simple, straight question: is cinema dead? We also talk about his thoughts on the photographic culture at large of today, tells us why Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal was an important film in his life and we end up talking about the Stendahl Syndrome, among other things.

The post Peter Greenaway – Faten Hamama Honorary Award #CIFF40 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews André Novais Oliveira, director of the film Temporada.

André Novais Oliveira premiered his film Temporada at the Locarno Film Festival in the Cineasti del Presente section and now he is in competition at the 36th Torino Film Festival. Compared to a neorealistic film that evokes the italian tradition Temporada focuses on the Brazilian artist and actress Grace Passò while following her everyday life in a season that from temporary becomes the essential moment of change in her life. Grace Passò’s performance is outstanding as the film, while telling her character’s story, manages to describe a part of the Brazilian society that we might know nothing about.

Temporada: Juliana has just moved from her hometown to a bigger city to work for the public health disease eradication program. On her new job she meets people, makes friends and has new experiences that start changing her life. At the same time, she feels she is losing her husband left behind in the backlands.

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PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews Gábor Reisz and Juli Berkes, director and producer of the film Bad Poems.

At first it had to be a noir then Gábor Reisz dropped the film project in favour of a more personal one: a story filled with his memories of the past which are all invisibly connected with each other. Juli Berkes describes the production’s journey accompanying the film, from all the producing and editing efforts to the choice of having the director himself to play the leading part. Bad Poems is in competition at the 36th Torino Film festival where Gábor Reisz won the Special Mention at the TFF32 with For Some Unexplicable Reason and it can certainly be defined as a therapeutic film for his director.

Bad Poems: Thirty-three-year-old Tamás has just had his heart shattered by his girlfriend, Anna. In Paris, of all places. So Tamás returns to Budapest, devastated and confused. He tries to process his sorrow by recalling his childhood memories and trying to understand this happened to him. The memories erupting inside Tamás and it seems that his present suffering is a consequence of events from the past. Tamás’ characters of various ages appear before him and reflect with humorous self-irony upon his past and present behavior.

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The post Gábor Reisz, Juli Berkes – Bad Poems #TFF36 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews David Nawrath, director of the film Atlas.

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti meets David Nawrath, at the 36th Torino Film Festival to present Atlas in competition. With Atlas Nawrath focuses on a 60-year old man who has clearly decided not to live his life but survive it every day. The chance of getting his life back arrives and the way Nawrath depicts it is neither conventional nor predictable. The director then also confirms that the film could be defined as a person’s attempt at regaining fatherhood.

Atlas: Walter is a sixty-year-old mover for forced evictions. He is the best and most loyal hauler that Walter’s boss Roland Grone employs at his house moving company. Grone is planning a risky real estate deal that involves money laundering for a notorious family clan. The tenants of an inner-city apartment building are supposed to be evicted and the house re-sold with a huge profit. However, one remaining tenant refuses to leave his home. Since then something will change and Walter will have to confront not only his crooked boss but also his own past.

The post David Nawrath – Atlas #TFF36 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews Lina Flint, producer of the film The Guilty.

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti meets Lina Flint, producer of The Guilty by Gustav Möller, in competition at the 36th Torino Film Festival. The film was made with a very low budget but as it’s a thriller set in a police station as the only location we see, The Guilty‘s tension and efficiency is built thanks to the expert use of the genre elements. Lina Flint explains how with director Gustav Möller they conceived the film right out of film school and decided to play with all the cliches and stereotypes surrounding the concept of the “damsel in distress” in order to twist them and mix them with the audience expectations.

The Guilty: The police officer Asger Holm is demoted to deskwork, he expects a sleepy beat as an emergency dispatcher. That all changes when he answers a panicked phone call from a kidnapped woman who then disconnects abruptly. Asger, confined to the police station, is forced to use others as his eyes and ears. The search to find the missing woman and her assailant will take every bit of his intuition and skill, as a ticking clock and his own personal demons conspire against him.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Richard E. Grant, actor of the film Can You Ever Forgive Me?.

Richard E. Grant is a nice and funny man, and a great actor. Talking about his last film, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, by Marielle Heller, we discover how easy it has been for him to click and connect with his co-star Melissa McCarthy, and how he worked to build up his character. After a 30 years old career he still manages to get roles in very diverse films, from independent ones like this to Star Wars. Pretty impressive, indeed.

Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Lee Israel is a best-selling celebrity biographer – and cat lover – who made her living in the 1970s and 80s profiling the likes of Katherine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, Estée Lauder and journalist Dorothy Kilgallen. When she found herself unable to get published because she had fallen out of step with the marketplace, Lee made a bold and irreversible career change: she turned her art form to crime, theft and deception, abetted by her loyal friend Jack.

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PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Avo Kaprealian, director of the documentary Life = Cinematic Imperfections.

Avo Kaprealian is a deeply committed director, concerned about the world we live in and the mechanisms we create to try and manage it, with a fast-paced life and a lack on introspection. His artistical choices very much reflect this attitude, and this impressive film leaves the audience in a trance, demanding a different approach to life and to the world. A deep experience.

Life = Cinematic Imperfections: In the condition of living in a time of killings and in dead spaces where anything is for sale, lost souls are looking for characters to live and places to go, in a country drowning in the confused puzzle of the past. They are crossing the road between catastrophes… going through the picture of human beings above and under identities…

The post Avo Kaprealian – Life = Cinematic Imperfections #TFF36 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Christoffer Nordenrot, actor and screenwriter of the film Unthinkable.

Christoffer Nordenrot has written an intriguing political thriller on a potential attack to Sweden from a foreign force (that has a face and a name at the end of the film – a very harsh and bold statement). Big action sequences and special effects to serve a story composed of personal and intimate tragedies that intertwine with the national catastrophe that is unraveling. An enormous narrative effort and a compelling visual rendition, further away from the Swedish films we are used to see.

Unthinkable: Alex is a successful artist whose controlled existence is disturbed when his mother dies in a suspected terror attack against Stockholm. For the first time in several years, Alex is forced to return to his childhood village to arrange the funeral. By accident Alex meets Anna, the youth love he has desperately been trying to forget. As old feelings are coming alive, more attempts around the country take place: Sweden is under an unknown attack. Will Alex succeed to reconcile with Anna before it’s too late?

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