FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Samuel Jouy, director of the film Sparring.

Debut filmmaker Samuel Jouy explains what being a sparring partner means in boxing and why he was interested in focusing on this lesser-known category of boxers who are not the ones shining on the ring, and yet carry with them the same passion, even though they may have given up on some of their dreams. The actor-turned-director also describes his main character Steve Landry’s (Mathieu Kassovitz in a role that fits him like a boxing glove) rather graceful acceptance of his shortcomings and the loving family life underpinning it – for an important subplot in this touching film is his beautiful relationship with his very cool wife (Olivia Merilahti, who also composed some of the music in Sparring), who loves him just as he is and is proud of him anyhow, as well as with his bright 10- or 12-year-old daughter Aurore (whose life is only just beginning, as her name suggests, and for whom he has all the hopes in the world, as he is at the twilight of his own not-so-impressive career). For this intelligent young girl, who sees everything and understands quite well what is at stake, her Dad always comes out looking like a hero and someone who ultimately manages to open doors, without counting on chance or on anyone’s charitable help.

Sparring: in his early forties, small-time boxer Steve Landry (Mathieu Kassovitz) has lost more bouts than he’s won. But before hanging up his gloves for good, he accepts an offer than many would turn down flat: being the sparring partner to emerging champion Tarek M’Bareck. One last chance to dazzle his wife and his children. Starring: Mathieu Kassovitz, Olivia Merilahti, Souleymane M’Baye, Billie Blain, Ali Labidi…

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

The post Samuel Jouy – Sparring #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews John Carroll Lynch, director of the film Lucky.

Character actor John Carroll Lynch’s debut feature film, Lucky, in competition at the 70th Locarno Festival, has been written by Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja with Harry Dean Stanton, the protagonist, in mind. Harry Dean is Lucky as the titles say in the film. Carroll Lynch describes his first approach to directing and why he decided to tell this story for his debut behind the camera. There’s not only one Lynch involved in the film but two as John Carroll Lynch managed to have David Lynch play a small role as one of Lucky’s old friends. Lucky is a tale of life and death and analyzes how, even though, we often talk about death, it’s only when it comes towards us that we have to try and find a way to deal with it, face it and maybe welcome it with a smile.

Lucky: having outlived and outsmoked all his contemporaries who inhabited his off-the-map desert town, the fiercely independent Lucky, a 90-year-old atheist, finds himself at the precipice of life, thrust into a journey of self-exploration, leading towards the so-often unattainable enlightenment.

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

The post John Carroll Lynch – Lucky #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Aaron Katz, director of the film Gemini.

Director Aaron Katz joins us for an interview at our 70th Locarno Festival studio to talk to us about his latest film, Gemini, from the International Competition. Hollywood starlets, death, mystery, and the wrong person accused of the crime; they sound like the ingredients of a good old fashioned film noir. Indeed, Katz tells us about the influences from these and more films and waves. But Gemini is also a new film, based in contemporary times, and especially set in contemporary L.A. The city plays an important role in the movie, but it was the director’s intention to show parts of the city that are rarely shown in this type of film. Katz also talks with us working with his actors, the use of humour in Gemini, and more.

Gemini: a heinous crime tests the complex relationship between a tenacious personal assistant and her boss, a Hollywood starlet. As the assistant travels across Los Angeles to unravel the mystery, she must deal with a determined policeman. At the same time, her understanding of friendship, truth and celebrity is deeply questioned.

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

The post Aaron Katz – Gemini #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, co-directors of the film Let the Corpses Tan.

The inseparable Belgian duo behind Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears confirm, often completing each other’s sentences, how closely they always work together, both when they write and when they shoot their genre movies. They explain how they moved from giallo to this unbridled blood-profuse Italian-style Corsica-set western based on a novel from the 70s and featuring cult actor Bernie Bonvoisin, known for his gritty, disturbing humour. And indeed, the fun they had on the set of Let the corpses tan transpires in Cattet and Forzani’s cheerful interaction.

Let the Corpses Tan: the Mediterranean, summer: azure sea, sun beating down… and 250 kilos of gold stolen by Rhino and his gang who’ve found the ideal hideout in a deserted village, cordoned off from its surroundings by an artist suffering creative block. But when two cops turn up unexpectedly, this little paradise, formerly the site of orgies and wild happenings, will turn into a hallucinatory, brutal battlefield.

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

The post Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani – Let the Corpses Tan #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Denis Côté, director of the film A Skin So Soft (Ta peau si lisse).

Denis Côté, known for always moving from documentary to fiction and back, tells us how his latest feature A Skin So Soft (Ta peau si lisse) fits into his work and about the relationship he had to develop with his real characters to tackle their all-consuming passion in a way that would create what it ultimately always fiction.

A Skin So Soft (Ta peau si lisse): Jean-François, Ronald, Alexis, Cédric, Benoit and Maxim are gladiators of modern times. From the strongman to the top-class bodybuilder, to the veteran who has become a trainer, they all share the same definition and obsession with overcoming their limitations. They are waiting for the next competition, working hard in the gym and following extreme diets.’ (official synopsis) Beyond the impeccable, exquisite cinematography and the largely non verbal, almost musical treatment of the sound design, in both of which his hand and eye are clearly recognisable, in A Skin So Soft, Quebec’s Denis Côté pairs beautifully the vertical dimension of typological observation with a deeply human narration that unfolds quietly towards a somewhat dream-like conclusion.

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

The post Denis Côté – A Skin So Soft (Ta peau si lisse) #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Alexander Fehling, actor of the film Three Peaks (Drei Zinnen).

Alexander Fehling plays one of the three protagonists of Jan Zabeil feature Three Peaks, screened in the Piazza Grande strand of the 70th Locarno Festival, the festival’s renowned outdoor screenings. Alexander Fehling plays the central father figure role in a complicated family portrait. He explains that this film was, for him, a labour of love, and tells us why. He also talks about how he was able to establish a level of closeness and intimacy with his co-stars, Bérénice Bejo and Arian Montgomery. The film is set in a spectacular (and spectacularly sinister) setting up in the mountains; he tells us that this is a setting he was not familiar with, and talks about the challenges of adapting to it.

Three Peaks (Drei Zinnen): Aaron invites his girlfriend Lea and her 8-year-old son Tristan on a trip to the mountains. What could be a starting point of a new life together, slowly turns into difficult territory as the three fight for their positions within the new family. High up in the Three Peaks region in the Italian Dolomites, Aaron and Tristan are faced with their ambivalent love for and deepest fears of one another, while Lea stands in between the two, trying to navigate this triangle. In his attempt to win the boy’s respect, Aaron takes him up the mountain and confronts Tristan with his continuous aggression towards him. When fog sets in and Aaron loses the boy, their power games reach a dangerous level…

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

The post Alexander Fehling – Three Peaks (Drei Zinnen) #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Jan Zabeil, director of the film Three Peaks (Drei Zinnen).

Filmmaker Jan Zabeil directed Three Peaks (Drei Zinnen), screened at the 70th Locarno Festival at the Piazza Grande, the Locarno Festival’s spectacular and renowned outdoor screenings. The film Three Peaks (Drei zinnen) is quite appropriate, as its spectacular of the wild mountainous area, in which the film is set, are truly terrific. Indeed, the film deals with a delicate and complex family portrait gradually confronted with forces of nature, somewhat beyond its protagonists’ control. Zabeil talks about the importance of the setting in the movie, and the difficulties of shooting there. He also tells us that he always tried his hardest to keep a level of intimacy during the shoot; one of the ways he did this was by working with a small crew: as small, at least, as the harsh situations and difficult stunts allows. Among other things, Zabeil is happy to share with us his method of working with his actors, remarkable trio composed by Alexander Fehling , Bérénice Bejo , Arian Montgomery, and expresses his delight with the film Three Peaks (Drei Zinnen) being screened at Locarno’s Piazza Grande.

Three Peaks (Drei Zinnen): Aaron invites his girlfriend Lea and her 8-year-old son Tristan on a trip to the mountains. What could be a starting point of a new life together, slowly turns into difficult territory as the three fight for their positions within the new family. High up in the Three Peaks region in the Italian Dolomites, Aaron and Tristan are faced with their ambivalent love for and deepest fears of one another, while Lea stands in between the two, trying to navigate this triangle. In his attempt to win the boy’s respect, Aaron takes him up the mountain and confronts Tristan with his continuous aggression towards him. When fog sets in and Aaron loses the boy, their power games reach a dangerous level…

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

The post Jan Zabeil – Three Peaks (Drei Zinnen) #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Jan Speckenbach, director of the film Freedom.

Director Jan Speckenbach talks about his latest film, Freedom, part of the international competition line-up of the 70th Locarno festival. Speckenback provides us with priceless insight on his method of working and his approach to dealing with the driving concept of the movie, which, as the title suggests, is freedom: a complicated topic and a complicated term. The director made some specific stylistic choices to strengthen this take on the topic through his story about a family coping with the sudden, unwarranted departure of the mother/wife, particularly focusing on the parallel stories of the wife and the husband (played respectively by Johanna Wokalek Hans-Jochen Wagner).

Freedom: a mother goes away, leaving her husband and their two children in limbo. She is driven by a force she cannot ignore: freedom. In Vienna, Nora wanders through a museum, succumbs to a flirtation and then thumbs a lift to Bratislava. Nora conceals her origin behind small lies, changes her appearance, finds work as a chambermaid and makes friends with the young Slovak woman Etela, a stripper, and her husband Tamás, a cook. Meanwhile, in Berlin, Philip tries to keep his family and job as well as his affair with Monika going. Against his own convictions, he, a lawyer, defends a xenophobic youngster, struggles with the role of single parent. Philip finds an – albeit unconscious – ear for his worries in the figure of a coma patient… The freedom Nora is longing for becomes Philip’s chains.

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

The post Jan Speckenbach – Freedom #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Hlynur Palmason, director of the film Winter Brothers.

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti interviews Hlynur Palmason, director of Winter Brothers, screening at the 70th Locarno Festival in the international competition. Hylnur Palmason was born in Iceland but studied filmmaking at the Danish National Film School. Winter Brothers is Palmason’s debut feature film so the director unveils the genesis of this project, his influences and his desire of telling a story of two people, their search for love, their struggle through life. The two brothers are both outsiders but in a very different way and it’s Emil the one who is bullied the most although his brother is also facing loneliness. Finally Palmason comments on the similarities between the dynamics and essential elements of his film with the ones composing the typical Western genre.

Winter Brothers: a brother odyssey set in a rural chalk-mining community during a cold winter. We follow two brothers working in this harsh environment focusing on the younger brother Emil, who distills moonshine made from stolen chemicals from the factory. Emil is an outsider, an oddball, who made a conscious choice for loneliness and is only accepted by the mining community due to his older brother Johan. Emil longs for passion, for being wanted and loved. When a fellow worker becomes sick, the moonshine and Emil are prime suspects. Gradually a violent feud erupts be-tween him and the tightly-knit mining community. Parallelly, Emil feels betrayed by his brother when he finds out that the neighbor girl Anna, the subject of his unfulfilled desires, chooses his older brother instead of him. Revenge, loneliness, and lack of love pervade this modern brother odyssey.

To follow the festival on facebook, click here.

The post Hlynur Palmason – Winter Brothers #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Elliott Crosset Hove and Simon Sears, actors of the film Winter Brothers.

The first film to be screened in the international competition at the 70th Locarno Festival is Winter Brothers, the debut film of danish director and visual artist Hlynur Palmason. The film is a brother odyssey, a tale of two brothers, two outsiders fighting against each other and struggling through life. Emil and Johan are respectively played by young actors Elliott Crosset Hove and Simon Sears. Strangely, the two already worked in the same TV series, the first season of Follow the Money but had never crossed paths during the shooting so they only met for Winter Brothers. The two actors describe their roles, the dynamics in the relationship between two brothers and reveal some details about a very intense and hard fighting scene between them. Is it a tale of two young men and their lack of love or a cold and white western film? In the interview, the actors’ opinion.

Winter Brothers: a brother odyssey set in a rural chalk-mining community during a cold winter. We follow two brothers working in this harsh environment focusing on the younger brother Emil, who distills moonshine made from stolen chemicals from the factory. Emil is an outsider, an oddball, who made a conscious choice for loneliness and is only accepted by the mining community due to his older brother Johan. Emil longs for passion, for being wanted and loved. When a fellow worker becomes sick, the moonshine and Emil are prime suspects. Gradually a violent feud erupts be-tween him and the tightly-knit mining community. Parallelly, Emil feels betrayed by his brother when he finds out that the neighbor girl Anna, the subject of his unfulfilled desires, chooses his older brother instead of him. Revenge, loneliness, and lack of love pervade this modern brother odyssey.

To follow the festival on facebook, click here.

The post Elliott Crosset Hove, Simon Sears – Winter Brothers #Locarno70 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.