FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Nicolas Wackerbath, director of the film Casting.

Nicolas Wackerbath tells us the peculiar way he used to create this film: no screenplay, just improvisation, long continuous shots of one hour and then editing. The intensity we get comes from this strenuous method, which definitely worked.

Casting:  One week before shooting starts, the main protagonist has yet to be cast. Vera is about to make her first TV movie, a remake of Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and takes her time looking for her ideal cast. While the producer and the crew become desperate, an actor in the crew, Gerwin, is happy about the extra work. He earns his money as fixed casting partner and exchanges lines with the famous applicants for the role. When the male lead leaves the production, Gerwin senses his chance to get a fresh start as an actor.

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PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Armando Iannucci, director of the film The Death of Stalin.

Armando Iannucci, director of The Death of Stalin, tells us about the birth of this incredible and great film. Taken from a graphic novel, it is a comical and hysterical trip into the structure of absolute power and the stupidity that often surrounds it. With an incredible cast that will blow you away.

The Death of Stalin:  1953 seems like any other year during Stalin’s mandate: confident (but not overly so) of his power, he continues to order the murder or deportation of dissidents, to suppress freedom of expression and to make sure the circle of people revolving around him toes the line. One morning, when he is found lying on the floor, his coterie panics… And obviously, the race to become his successor begins. Who will win out over the others: Khrushchev, who is more like a Mafioso than a politician; the loose cannon Molotov; mild-mannered Zhukov; or evil Beria?

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PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Marleen Jonkman, director of the film Messi and Maud (La Hollandesa).

Marleen Jonkman directs a film about a woman who has to fight her obsession of becoming a mother once she has to surrender to the harsh reality that she cannot have a child. Marleen came on board with a script confirmed, that she then changed and rewrote partially with the screenwriter to give her more personal point of view. A hard task that was worth it. An all-female film, from the director to the writers to the lead actress, in an astonishing nature.

Messi and Maud (La Hollandesa):  Forty-year-old Maud feels like she has failed. After years of trying, she and her boyfriend Frank have to accept that they will never have children. To breathe new life into their relationship, Frank takes her on a trip to Patagonia. While Frank puts all of his energy into making a new start, Maud continues to be obsessed with having a child. After one final quarrel on the subject, she abandons Frank to travel alone, without a destination, over Chile’s serpentine topography. From the rough and cold South of Patagonia to the sweltering heat of the Northern desert, Maud finally makes peace with herself.

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PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews Tommy Wirkola and Noomi Rapace, director and actress of the film What Happened to Monday – Seven Sisters.

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti meets Tommy Wirkola and Noomi Rapace, director and absolute protagonist of What Happened to Monday, presented at the 35th Torino Film Festival in the Festa Mobile section. The film sees Noomi Rapace playing seven identical sisters, developing their personalities and personal journeys in this distopic future where, because of overpopulation threatening the planet’s resources, the One Child Policy forces people to have one child only. The seven sisters manage to hide for 30 years but something goes wrong and they will have to fight to survive. Noomi Rapace describes how challenging this acting experience was for her, from having to die multiple times and then mourn her own death to physically fight with “herself”. Wirkola reveals that it was his decision to change the protagonist from male to female as in the beginning it was supposed to be Seven Brothers.

What Happened to Monday – Seven Sisters:  The out-of-control birth rate has forced governments to enact the drastic One-Child-Policy instituted by the Child Allocation Bureau, which is directed by Dr. Cayman, who has decreed that all children in excess must be hibernated. A woman dies giving birth to septuplet girls and, to save them all, their grandfather hides them and names them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Each one of them may leave the house only on the day that corresponds to their name; they use the shared identity of Karen Settman and are forbidden from revealing their family secret. Hidden for six days a week, the seven sisters are only free to be themselves in the prison of the apartment in which they live. Everything goes smoothly until one day Monday doesn’t return home…

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

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PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Bryan Jones, curator of the special effects for the film What Happened to Monday – Seven Sisters.

Bryan Jones is one of the modern masters in the world of special effects. He worked on Prometheus, Terminator 2, The Lone Ranger. He is considered a god. A nice guy, passionate about his work. An interesting look behind the way special effects are done.

What Happened to Monday – Seven Sisters:  The out-of-control birth rate has forced governments to enact the drastic One-Child-Policy instituted by the Child Allocation Bureau, which is directed by Dr. Cayman, who has decreed that all children in excess must be hibernated. A woman dies giving birth to septuplet girls and, to save them all, their grandfather hides them and names them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Each one of them may leave the house only on the day that corresponds to their name; they use the shared identity of Karen Settman and are forbidden from revealing their family secret. Hidden for six days a week, the seven sisters are only free to be themselves in the prison of the apartment in which they live. Everything goes smoothly until one day Monday doesn’t return home…

The post Bryan Jones – What Happened to Monday – Seven Sisters #TFF35 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Sierra Pettengil, director and producer of the film The Reagan Show.

Sierra Pettengil talks with Angelo Acerbi about the making of an impressive documentary about Ronald Reagan’s system of self promotion and communication. She watched, together with her co-director Pacho Velez, more than 1000 hours of archival video material to compose this portrait of one of the most despised US presidents, until now.

The Reagan Show:  Told solely through 1980s network news and videotapes created by the Reagan administration itself, the film explores the president’s made-for-TV approach to politics. This documentary follows Ronald Reagan’s rivalry with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, tracing how the American president used his public-relations skills to overcome Soviet mistrust, the objections of a skeptical press, and the looming threat of World War III.

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PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews Pablo Larraín, director and President of the Jury at the 35th Torino Film Festival.

Pablo Larraín is back in Turin as President of the Jury of the 35th Torino Film Festival where he won the official competition in 2008 with Tony Manero. The chilean director joins FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti again after the 2016 Mostra del cinema di Venezia where he presented Jackie to talk about his jury duties, his approach to the films he has to evaluate. What is Pablo Larraín looking for in a film? The director welcomes us into his world once again and describes his feelings about having so many young filmmakers looking up to him and the cinematic world of poetry and politics he created.

The FRED Film Radio Award was given to Pablo Larraín, the Oscar-nominated Director, at the Torino Film Festival on 27th November, where he will be leading the Jury, as President, for the 35th edition of the Festival. “Larraín is a Producer and a Filmaker who manages to combine commitment and formal elegance, denunciation and experimentation with works that are at the same time classic and yet original and that challenge any attempt at categorisation”, explains Federico Spoletti, the founder of FRED Film Radio. He went on to explain, “The Chilean director’s films, even with their variety of themes and languages, depict a very personal yet organic poetic landscape”. Larraín’s art, “breaks with tradition and aims to expose social conventions and all forms of hypocrisy, be it collective or individual”. FRED Film Radio explains its choice in presenting Larraín with this Award, “because in his work, Larraín is particularly determined to unveil the mechanisms of communication and manipulation used by those who wield great power”. The FRED Award was created specifically to acknowledge an individual, in the world of cinema, who strives to promote and support not only independent cinema, but also intercultural exchange.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Nizam Najjar, director of the film Aleppo’s Fall.

Nizam Najjar presented his feature documentary, Aleppo’s Fall, at the 30th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Najjar is Syrian/Norwegian, and for this documentary returned to his native country to see with his own eyes why the rebels in Aleppo were failing. In this interview, we ask him about the filming of Aleppo’s Fall, and about his own reaction when he had first heard about the Arab Spring. He also tells us that while filming, the more he knew, the more he wanted to find out, and so we ask him whether it was this curiosity, this desire to know, that helped him get through terrifying moments of war that he captured in his documentary. Among other things, Najjar also tells us about an IDFA promoted idea to distribute Aleppo’s Fall not only in the Netherlands but also in Aleppo.

Aleppo’s Fall:  When the Arab Spring reached Syria in 2011, Nizam Najjar, a Syrian now living in Norway, thought the rebels would quickly oust President Bashar al-Assad. But the peaceful protests were brutally suppressed, and the once united rebel movement fell apart. Najjar returns to Syria to investigate why the rebels are failing in Aleppo, the city of his birth. Embedded with the rebels and a local cameraman, he risks his life on the front. In the heat of battle, he discovers how danger comes not only from the outside but also from within, as two rebel leaders operate opposing strategies. In meetings, during a ceasefire, at a party and in the midst of fighting, it becomes only too apparent that there’s no brotherhood among the rebels. How can such a divided group defeat a leader who appears to be able to draw on inexhaustible resources from outside the country?

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Mohamed Siam, director of the film Amal.

Director Siam Mohamed talks about Amal, his feature documentary, which he presented at the 30th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The film talks about a young woman, Amal, and her coming of age from 14-years-old to 20-year-old, during the Egyptian Revolution and in the years after it. In this interview, the director tells us that one of the things his documentary is that change is a hard thing, even harder when what is changing is a huge country like Egypt, of 90,000 people. Yet, all the facts, stats, and news are much easier to comprehend when it is characterized in a person. Amal, the protagonist of his film, allows a spectator to comprehend this, and as Siam describes Amal as a “kind of a sponge, absorbing everything, and a mirror, reflecting everything. Through her we see all of the country.” Among the other topics dealt with in this interview, we ask Siam about filming a person’s life over the course of many years, and the bond that developed between him and Amal.

 Amal:  Amal is 14 years old when she ends up on Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution, after the death of her boyfriend in the Port Said Stadium riot. During the protests, she is beaten by police and dragged across the square by her hair. This coming-of-age film follows her over the years after the revolution. As the film cuts between the unfolding current events and Amal’s rapidly changing life and appearance, we see her searching for her own identity in a country in transition. Amal is fiery and fearless, sinking her teeth into the protests and constantly lecturing her mother, who works as a judge. A girl among men, she also has to fight for respect and the right to take part, both in the street and in the rest of her life. In Egypt, even for a young woman like Amal—her name means “hope”—the choices open to her for her future are limited.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Feargal Ward and Tadhg O’Sullivan, director and co-writer of the film The Lonely Battle of Thomas Reid.

Feragal Ward and Tadhg O’Sullivan presented their latest documentary, The Lonely Battle of Thomas Reid, at the 30th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) – Ward directed the film and they both co-wrote it. The Thomas Reid of the title is an Irish farmer locked in a legal battle with a U.S. multi-national company eager to force him to sell his land. “There aren’t too many types of story in the world,” says O’Sullivan in this interview, “and what I liked about teasing this film was that the story is quite simple.” The space within the dramatic moments allows us to really get to know Thomas Reid and what it’s like to be him: “Beneath the oddness, and the strangeness, there is a universal humanity that comes through.” Ward talks about Reid not being very excited about the project and the difficulties of maintaining a level of trust with him throughout the filming stage. He also talks about the use of re-enactments: “I was quite fascinated with the language of the legal process … and I wanted [it] to be represented on the actual lands in which this legal discourse was about.” In the end, what was important about The Lonely Battle of Thomas Reid was the truth. “You’re always taking the queue, to my mind, from how … your character perceives the world in the given psychological state that he is in in the moment of the film,” O’Sullivan says. In this interview, Ward and O’Sullivan also talk about whether Thomas Reid’s story is common in Ireland, where they hope their film will travel in the future, and more.

The Lonely Battle of Thomas Reid:  For years, the Irish farmer Thomas Reid has been locked in a grueling battle with his neighbor, U.S. microchip manufacturer Intel. The multinational wants to expand and has its eye on Reid’s land. Eager to boost employment in the region, the Irish authorities are doing their utmost to force Reid into a sale. But the farmer has no intention of leaving his 300-year-old ancestral home, where he lives alone, surrounded by cows and chickens. The desaturated color, the soundtrack with snippets of radio shows, and the unorthodox reimaginings of courtroom scenes produce an intriguing and slightly alienating effect. Director Feargal Ward follows the calm rhythm of farm life, which seems to stem from a different age. Traffic roars by beyond the stone walls that mark the boundaries of Reid’s land, but he travels everywhere on foot or on his old bicycle. His house is crammed with hoarded junk and he appears to live in chaos. Nevertheless, this tenacious eccentric proves to be a formidable opponent of the system.

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