FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Tomasz Kot and Joanna Kulig, actors of the film Cold War.

Tomasz Kot and Joanna Kulig are the absolute protagonists of a love story set in the Cold War’s Poland of the 1950’s that is inspired by director Pawel Pawlikowski’s own parents. The actors talk about working on a big set with an Oscar winning director. Joanna Kulig has been compared, with her performance in black and white, to Jeanne Moreau. As she’s flattered by the comparison, she reveals that Pawlikowski wanted her to get inspiration from Lauren Bacall for every move and every scene. He would constantly tell her to think about Lauren Bacall. For Tomasz Kot, Cold War was the first experience in a big film. The director cast him because he didn’t look like an actor of our time and therefore he was perfect to play a person living in the 50’s. Pawel Pawlikowski just won Best Director at the 71st Festival de Cannes.

Cold War is a passionate love story between two people of different backgrounds and temperaments, who are fatally mismatched and yet fatefully condemned to each other. Set against the background of the Cold War in the 1950s in Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris, the film depicts an impossible love story in impossible times.

For the page of the film on the Festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Adilkhan Yerzhanov, director of the film The Gentle Indifference of the World.

A lovely talk with Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov about the anecdote at the origin of this poetic yet harsh tale, where love and innocence meet a world where money reigns supreme, adding an element of uncertainty to the love story. He also tells us about his visual dramaturgy, his view of systems and regimes as something primarily located inside the people themselves, and his desire to infuse The Gentle Indifference of the World (the title of which is a quote from Albert Camus) with the subtle absurdity of a certain European literature.

The Gentle Indifference of the World: As Saltanat must leave her idyllic life in the country and fend for her family’s welfare in the morally tainted city where money rules over human relationships, she meets Kuandyk, a man of similar innocence and love for European litterature.

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PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Adele Haenel, actress of the film The Trouble With You (En liberté!), by Pierre Salvadori.

Adele Haenel underlines the joy and exhilaration of the part she plays in the unbridled comedy The Trouble With You (all the more since it is an unusual one in her career lined with strong and serious dramas such as The Unknown Girl by the Dardenne brothers or the more recent 120bpm), but also the scary element in trying herself at a new genre, a challenge she couldn’t pass on. She describes her reaction to the script, the work on set, the conditions that allowed the comedy to suceed so brilliantly, and the devices (theatrical, situational…) its universal humour rests on. Haenel also points out the political aspect of comedy, the freedom and distance it brings and the rebellion this contains.

The Trouble With You (En liberté!): Pierre Salvadori’s The Trouble With You had the Croisette splitting their sides laughing. We enter this comedy through a door smashed by unbridled B movie cops, and through a bedtime story told by a hero policeman’s widow, Yvonne (Adele Haenel), still working as a police detective station), a tale which will be recurrent throughout the film, although in a different version every time, according to Yvonne’s mood, since she has just found out, whilst interrogating a S&M vinyle-hooded fellow speaking through a vocoder, that her late husband (Vincent Elbaz) was actually a dirty cop. In her desire to make amends with the innocent guy he sent to jail (Pio Marmai), she befriends him unbeknownst to her colleague, friend, and secret love interest (Damien Bonnard), only to discover that he has become an endearing maniac whom his own girlfriend (Audrey Tautou) doesn’t quite recognize. A fantastically well staged and interpreted succession of priceless dialogues and situations ensues, supported by a very cleverly developed discourse on narration itself.

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Rogelio Sosa, Matilde Hernández Guinea and Fabiana Hernández, actors of the film Comprame Un Revolver.

Rogelio Sosa, musician and first time actor, as well as Matilde and Fabiana Hernández, the two daughters of the director, here actresses, talk with us about the difficulties of making a film so tense and tough: for Rogelio being his first film the challenge was doubled, for the girls it was the experience of having their dad as the director.

Comprame Un Revolver:  In a timeless México where women are disappearing, a girl called Huck wears a mask to hide her gender. She helps her dad, a tormented addict, to take care of an abandoned baseball camp where the narcos gather to play. The father tries to protect her as he can. With the help of her friends, a group of lost boys who have the power of camouflaging themselves in the windy desert, Huck has to fight to overcome her reality and to defeat the local capo.

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Julio Hernández Cordón, director of the film Comprame Un Revolver.

Julio Hernández Cordón, director of Comprame Un Revolver, talks with us about the motivations behind the film, about his worries for contemporary Mexico and the need of violence that pervades it. He also chose to work with his two young daughters as actresses, which presented  another totally different struggle, more tiring and challenging.

Comprame Un Revolver:  In a timeless México where women are disappearing, a girl called Huck wears a mask to hide her gender. She helps her dad, a tormented addict, to take care of an abandoned baseball camp where the narcos gather to play. The father tries to protect her as he can. With the help of her friends, a group of lost boys who have the power of camouflaging themselves in the windy desert, Huck has to fight to overcome her reality and to defeat the local capo.

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Etienne Kallos, director of the film The Harvesters.

Etienne Kallos is a passionate director. He loves his films but most of all he loves the actors, that he employed to tell a story of a family.  However, The Harvesters is not just the story of a family,  but of a region of the world, where belonging to the land is the most important thing, and where religion is a tool employed to accept the harshness of life and to find reasons to continue.

The Harvesters: South Africa, Free State region, isolated stronghold to the Afrikaans white ethnic minority culture. In this conservative farming territory obsessed with strength and masculinity, Janno is different, secretive, emotionally frail. One day his mother, fiercely religious, brings home Pieter, a hardened street orphan she wants to save, and asks Janno to make this stranger into his brother. The two boys start a fight for power, heritage and parental love.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Dina Emam, producer of the film Yo Meddine.

Born from Egyptian parents but living and breathing in New York City, first time feature film producer Dina Eman meets FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti to describe her journey into production with Yo Meddine by A.B. Shawky, in competition at the 71st Festival De Cannes. It was the story about a friendship, about certain freaks being cast out of society that convinced Dina that A. B Shawky’s idea was the one she could produce to turn it into a film. In this very moment in history, the lesson we could learn from Yo Meddine is that “we should all look at people like Obama, the little boy in the film, looks at Beshay and everyone he meets along his way”. No more outsiders, only people.

Yo Meddine: Beshay – a man cured of leprosy – has never left the leper colony in the Egyptian desert where he has lived since childhood. Following the death of his wife, he finally decides to go in search of his roots. With his meagre possessions strapped to a donkey cart, he sets out. Quickly joined by Obama, the Nubian orphan he has taken under his wing, Beshay will cross Egypt and confront the world with all its sorrows, its hardships and moments of grace, in his quest for a family, a place to belong, a little humanity…

For the page of the film on the Festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews A. B. Shawky, director of the film Yo Meddine.

A few of us know that in Egypt there is still a leper colony where people with this illness are put aside from society. With Yo Meddine, A. B. Shawky takes this subject into the light to transform it into a story about a great friendship,the one between Beshay and little Obama. Yo Meddine is in competition at the 71st Festival de Cannes and he explains why the topic of leprosy is nowadays more of a social problem than a medical one.

Yo Meddine: Beshay – a man cured of leprosy – has never left the leper colony in the Egyptian desert where he has lived since childhood. Following the death of his wife, he finally decides to go in search of his roots. With his meagre possessions strapped to a donkey cart, he sets out. Quickly joined by Obama, the Nubian orphan he has taken under his wing, Beshay will cross Egypt and confront the world with all its sorrows, its hardships and moments of grace, in his quest for a family, a place to belong, a little humanity…

For the page of the film on the Festival website, click here.

The post A. B. Shawky – Yo Meddine #Cannes2018 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Ali Abbasi, director of the film Gräns.

The risk of defining Gräns as a horror drama could be limiting it to a certain genre and losing the essence of this film, the second feature by Ali Abbasi, screening at the 71st Festival de Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section. It is more than a horror drama, it’s based on nordic myths and folk tales but it’s a love story about two outsiders finding each other. As Ali Abbasi remarks, they’re both trying to find their place in the world and still deciding who they want to be in life. Gräns is among the most unconventional films to end up in a selection like the Un Certain Regard which is expected to be more classic although attentive towards new “cinematic looks”. It’s not the first time Ali Abbasi is on FRED Film Radio as he was already interviewed once for his first feature film Shelley screening at the Berlinale 2016 in the Panorama section.

Gräns: Customs officer Tina is known for her extraordinary sense of smell. It’s almost as if she can sniff out the guilt on anyone hiding something. But when Vore, a suspicious-looking man, walks past her, her abilities are challenged for the first time ever. Tina can sense Vore is hiding something she can’t identify. Even worse, she feels a strange attraction to him. As Tina develops a special bond with Vore and discovers his true identity, she also realizes the truth about herself. Tina, like Vore, does not belong to this world. Her entire existence has been one big lie and now she has to choose: keep living the lie or embrace Vore’s terrifying revelations.

For the page of the film on the Festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Victor Polster, actor of the film Girl.

Victor Polster is a professional ballet dancer and with Girl he signs his debut on the big screen. Girl is Lukas Dhont’s first feature film and it’s screening at the 71st edition of Festival de Cannes. Victor plays Lara, a teenage girl born in a boy’s body who’s not only struggling to prepare for the operation that will finally turn her into a “girl” but she’s also working hard to become a prima ballerina at a prestigious ballet school. Polster reveals that he auditioned for a supporting role and ended up becoming the protagonist.

Girl: Determined 15 year old Lara is committed to becoming a professional ballerina. With the support of her father, she throws herself into this quest for the absolute at a new school. Lara’s adolescent frustrations and impatience are heightened as she realizes her body does not bend so easily to the strict discipline because she was born a boy.

For the page of the film on the Festival website, click here.

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