FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Chloë Sevigny and Charlie Plummer, actors of the film Lean on Pete.

Andrew Haigh presented his latest film, Lean on Pete, in competition at the 74th Venice International Film Festival. Two of the actors in the film, Chloë Sevigny and Charlie Plummer (FRED also interviewed Sevigny on her short film Carmen from this year’s MIU MIU Women’s Tales, also presented in Venice this year), stopped by our Venice studio to talk about working on the film. During this interview, they share with us their experience of working on the movie and how they connected with their characters.

Lean on Pete follows fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson. He wants a home, food on the table and a high school he can attend for more than part of the year. As the son of a single father working in warehouses across the Pacific Northwest, stability is hard to find. Hoping for a new start they move to Portland, Oregon, where Charley takes a summer job, with a washed-up horse trainer, and befriends a failing racehorse named Lean on Pete.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Ai Weiwei, artist and director of the film Human Flow.

“You cannot avoid hearing the refugee situation,” says artist Ai Weiwei, who made a documentary feature inspired by it, Human Flow, presented at the 74th Venice Film Festival. The activist, artist and filmmaker stopped by our studio to talk about it. He discusses balancing research with personal experience (such as his own upbringing in China), the visual style of Human Flow, his thoughts on the role of filmmakers today, and more.

Human Flow:  over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war in the greatest human displacement since World War II. Human Flow, an epic film journey led by the internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei, gives a powerful visual expression to this massive human migration. The documentary elucidates both the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact. Captured over the course of an eventful year in 23 countries, the film follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretches across the globe in countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey. Human Flow is a witness to its subjects and their desperate search for safety, shelter and justice: from teeming refugee camps to perilous ocean crossings to barbed- wire borders; from dislocation and disillusionment to courage, endurance and adaptation; from the haunting lure of lives left behind to the unknown potential of the future. Human Flow comes at a crucial time when tolerance, compassion and trust are needed more than ever. This visceral work of cinema is a testament to the unassailable human spirit and poses one of the questions that will define this century: Will our global society emerge from fear, isolation, and self-interest and choose a path of openness, freedom, and respect for humanity?

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PODCAST | Nicolò Comotti interviews Daniel McCabe and Horeb Bulambo Shindano, director and line producer of the film This is Congo.

FRED has the privilege to talk to Daniel McCabe and Horeb Bulambo Shindano, the filmmaking heroes that managed to bring us one of the fiercest documentaries in recent years: This is Congo. This is Congo is a blunt, violent, earnest and yet hopeful look at one of the largest countries in Africa, ridden by war and the plague of corruption. While today’s Congo is like “hell on earth”, there is a ray of hope for its future, thanks to the warmth, the strength, and the sense of justice that many Congolese have – and want for their own country.

This is Congo:  over the last two decades, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has seen more than five million conflict-related deaths, multiple regime changes and the wholesale impoverishment of its people. Though this ongoing conflict is the world’s bloodiest since WWII, little is known in the West about the players or stakes involved. For the first time, This is Congo provides a unique and unfiltered look into the world’s longest continuing conflict and those who are surviving within it. By following four compelling characters — a whistleblower, a patriotic military commander, a mineral smuggler and a displaced tailor — the film offers viewers a truly Congolese perspective on the problems that plague this lushly beautiful, mineral-rich nation. These characters exemplify the unique resilience of a people who have lived and died through generations due to the cycle of brutality generated by this conflict.

For the page of the film in the festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Damian Hill and Ty Perham, actors of the film West of Sunshine.

Actors Damian Hill and Ty Perham stopped by our FRED studio for a quick chat about their work on Jason Raftopoulos’ feature West of Sunshine, presented in the Orizzonti section of Venezia 74. Respectively, they play the father and the son, lead characters, of the film. In this interview we discover not only how they were able to get into their roles, but Hill also tells us that he is Perham’s stepfather in real life, and how this impacted their performances, particularly during the more delicate moments of the film.

West of Sunshine:  separated from his family and caught in a cycle of gambling and debt, Jim has less than a day to repay a violent loan shark. His day is turned upside down when he must look after his young son who is on school holidays. Jim’s relationship with his son is tested as his plans to pay back the loan fail. When his last desperate effort to repay the debt puts his son’s life at risk, he must make a choice between his past and a second chance at life.

For the page of the film in the festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Jason Raftopoulos and Alexandros Ouzas, director and producer of the film West of Sunshine.

Director Jason Raftopoulos stopped by FRED’s studio to talk about his film West of Sunshine, alongside the producer of the film, Alexandros Ouzas. In this short interview, many topics are discussed, including the importance of the road and the car, where most of this father-son family drama is set, while Ouzas gives us a brief overview on the production aspect of things.

West of Sunshine:  Separated from his family and caught in a cycle of gambling and debt, Jim has less than a day to repay a violent loan shark. His day is turned upside down when he must look after his young son who is on school holidays. Jim’s relationship with his son is tested as his plans to pay back the loan fail. When his last desperate effort to repay the debt puts his son’s life at risk, he must make a choice between his past and a second chance at life.

For the page of the film in the festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins, actors of the film The Shape of Water.

Actors Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins stopped by FRED’s studio at the 74th Venice International Film Festival to talk about their work on Guillermo Del Toro’s latest film, The Shape of Water, presented in the festival’s competition. Among the topics discussed, Spencer tells us about the experience of working with a filmmaker she has been a fan of for a long time, while Jenkins reveals to us that he did not know he was going to be the film’s narrator until later in the production.

The Shape of Water: The Shape of Water is an other-worldly fairy tale, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962. In the hidden high-security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa is trapped in a life of isolation. Elisa’s life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda discover a secret classified experiment.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Guillermo Del Toro and Sally Hawkins, director and actress of the film The Shape of Water.

Director Guillermo Del Toro and actress Sally Hawkins stopped by our FRED studios at the 74th Venice Film Festival to talk about their work, The Shape of Water, the feature film presented in Venice’s main competition. This brief and intense interview includes Del Toro discussing how he is able to suspend his disbelief with his movies, including his latest one, while Hawkins tells us how she was able to step into her role in the film; as she says: “it was on the page … I could just feel it from day one.”

The Shape of Water is an other-worldly fairy tale, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962. In the hidden high-security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa is trapped in a life of isolation. Elisa’s life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda discover a secret classified experiment.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Paul Schrader, Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried, director and actors of the film First Reformed.

FRED interviews director Paul Schrader and actors Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried, who presented their film First Reformed in competition at the 74th Venice International Film festival. During this brief but intense chat, Schrader tells us that this was the type of spiritual film that he had always wanted to make, ever since he was a film critic, and has never lost interest in. Hawke shares with us a unique approach that helped him prepare for his role, while Seyfried talks about how being pregnant in real life helped her give her performance of a pregnant character an added depth.

First Reformed is a film about spiritual life starring Ethan Hawke as the minister of a small, historical and empty church. An ex-military chaplain, Toller is tortured by the loss of a son he encouraged to enlist in the armed forces. As Toller struggles with his faith, he is further challenged after a young couple, Mary and her radical environmentalist husband Michael, come to him for counselling. Consumed by thoughts that the world is being destroyed by big business and discovering the church’s complicity with unscrupulous corporations, Toller embarks on a perilous selfassigned undertaking with the hope that he may finally restore the faith and purpose he’s been longing for in his mission to right the wrongs done to so many.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Deborah Haywood, Joanna Scanlan, Lily Newmark, director and actresses of the film Pin Cushion.

Director Deborah Haywood and actresses Joanna Scanlan and Lily Newmark stopped by the FRED studio at the 74th Venice International Film Festival to talk about their film, Pin Cushion, which opened the program of Settimana della Critica. In this interview, Haywood talks about the reading of the film as a fairytale, and the depiction of a hostile world in which its protagonists find themselves. Scanlan and Newmark describe their experience of working on a film production during which they felt protected, and the director talks about whether and how she is able to preserve the originality of the vision and what, in her words, “comes from the belly.”

Pin Cushion: Unusually close mother Lyn and daughter Iona are excited for their new life in a new town. After a tricky start, Iona becomes ‘best friends’ with Keely, Stacey, and Chelsea. Used to being Iona’s best friend herself, Lyn feels left out, so she also makes friends with Belinda, her neighbour. As much as Lyn and Iona pretend with each other that things are great, things are not going that well for either of them. Both mother and daughter hide behind fantasies and lies. When Lyn understands what is really going on with Iona, she figures out a way to punish her friends and keep Iona safe by her side … forever.

For the official page of the film in the festival website, click here.

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