FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Lolita Chammah, actress of the film Barrage.

Lolita Chammah is the protagonist of Barrage by Laura Schroeder, screening at the 67th Berlinale in the Forum Section. The film sees Catherine (Lolita Chammah) as a young mother coming home to her pre-adolescent daughter and her mom to try and pick up where she left. It is the story of a mother trying to learn how to get her role back into her daughter’s life. The film shows how young women have to deal with the society’s concept of a good mother and how difficult it is to decide which path to take in life. In Barrage, Isabelle Huppert plays Catherine’s mom and since the two women are also mother and daughter in real life, Lolita Chammah tells FRED the joys and difficulties of working with such a strong and famous Oscar nominee mother

Barrage: Catherine returns to Luxembourg from Switzerland following a period of ten years during which her daughter Alba was raised by her own mother Elisabeth. From the side of the tennis court, she watches Elisabeth coach Alba, her face clearly showing how well she remembers this mixture of stimulus and humiliation from her own childhood. The roles in this female family trio have been assigned. Does Catherine stand any sort of chance of being a mother to her daughter after so much time has passed? On a spontaneous trip to the family’s summer house, Alba and Catherine’s wounds and longings come out into the open. Sometimes they seem more like two very different sisters, who dance together in the garden and wear the same childish sweatshirts. When they bury Catherine’s dog Charbon in the forest, they resemble two children performing a ceremony for a pet. Catherine named the dog after a song, “Black Like Coal” – the same dark colour as the depressive moods she takes tablets to ward off. The gentleness of Laura Schroeder’s storytelling is shot through with serious undertones, supported by a carefully chosen soundtrack and most of all her superb actors.

For the film page on the festival website click here.

The post Lolita Chammah – Barrage #Berlinale appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Ildikó Enyedi, director of the film On Body and Soul.

Fred’s Chiara Nicoletti meets Ildiko Enyedi, director of On Body and Soul, film in competition at the 67° Berlinale. When asked on the genesys of the film, Ildiko answers: “I was in love” . Being in love is a status that opens every door to people’s feelings and emotions and that led Ildiko to write the story of this connection. Maria and Endre are two strange souls that miraculously find each other. They feel each other and they really get what the other person is and that’s something so rare to see in life and on the big screen.

On Body and Soul: the director of an industrial slaughterhouse is suspicious about Maria, the new quality inspector sent by the authorities. Endre thinks she’s pretty, but she’s too formal and keeps too much to herself. He also thinks she’s too tough on grading the beef carcass, but Maria sticks to her standards with the same focused order she tries to run her life. During routine company interviews, a lady psychologist discovers that Maria and Endre are having similar recurring dreams. They are embarrassed by what this implies, as the two introverts know nothing about one another outside of work. The following day, they check again: they had the exact same dream the night before. As they continue to compare dreams, it becomes clear that they meet each night in a common realm: a peaceful snowy forest where they are graceful deer who gently love each other. Maria and Endre hesistantly accept this strange coincidence. They cannot ignore the intimacy they share so effortlessly in their dreams. For two people seemingly not suitable at all for love, it won’t be easy to recreate in broad daylight this harmonious relationship of their lonely nights…

For the film page on the festival website click here.

The post Ildikó Enyedi – On Body and Soul #Berlinale appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Hiam Abbass, actress of the film Insyriated.

Hiam Abbass is back on FRED from the 67th Berlinale to present her latest film, Insyriated, screening at the Festival in the Panorama section. The film sees a woman having to protect her entire family from the horror of the war outside, while trapped in her apartment. In the first minutes of the film, Oum Yazan (Hiam Abbass) tells Halima, the young woman she’s hosting at her house, that she will find the strength to be brave. Being brave and courageous is a choice for women during the war, Hiam Abbass comments on this moment in the film and on it’s important to never get used to war, fight, fear. This is why her character is so determined to have a normal life while there are shootings and bombings outside.

Insyriated: trapped inside her house in a city under siege, Oum Yazan, mother of three, turned her flat into a safe harbor for her family and neighbors, trying to protect them from the war outside. When bombs threaten to destroy the building, when snipers turn the courtyards into deadly zones, and burglars break in to claim their dreadful bounties, maintaining the thin balance of routine inside the walls becomes a matter of life and death.

For the film page on the festival website click here.

The post Hiam Abbass – Insyriated #Berlinale appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Philippe Van Leeuw, director of the film Insyriated.

Philippe Van Leeuw’s new film has just shaken the Panorama’ section of the 67th Berlinale as it represents the horror of Syria’s word by following a family trapped in their own apartment. Its title is Insyriated and its main actress is Hiam Abbass. The idea of the film came to Van Leuw in 2013 and from that time, the war hasn’t stopped and it’s still on so the film keeps being actual. Besides Hiam Abbass, Diamand Abou Abboud and Juliette Navis, all the other actors in the film are from Syria and on their experience Van Leeuw based some of the happenings in the film. The kitchen is the place where they try to hide, we don’t see or can’t see what happens outside but the uncertainty of what future will bring them is written on their faces, their panting, their trying to have a normal life despite the cruelty and killings outside.

Insyriated: trapped inside her house in a city under siege, Oum Yazan, mother of three, turned her flat into a safe harbor for her family and neighbors, trying to protect them from the war outside. When bombs threaten to destroy the building, when snipers turn the courtyards into deadly zones, and burglars break in to claim their dreadful bounties, maintaining the thin balance of routine inside the walls becomes a matter of life and death.

For the film page on the festival website click here.

The post Philippe Van Leeuw – Insyriated #Berlinale appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Teona Strugar Mitevska, director of the film When the day had no name.

Leading Macedonian director and producer Teona Strugar Mitevska, back in Berlin with another sensitive, nuanced story paired with masterfully suggestive and technically impeccable visuals, tells us more about the true subject of the film (beyond the true story that inspired it). She also reflects on the construction of her group of characters and pays hommage to French DoP Agnès Godard’s conceptual depth and profound understanding of her intentions.

When the day had no name: Based the true story of a yet unexplained multiple murder which shook today’s Macedonia, a country still stifled by inner ethic and religious divisions, with an economy offering little prospects, the film follows the final day of a wandering group of teenage boys, all friends, with their aggression and frustrations, their shyness and unformulated desires, and the lack of guidance and healthy values around them. between glorious country landscapes and dark city walls.

For the film page on the festival website click here.

The post Teona Strugar Mitevska – When the day had no name #Berlinale appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Pia Hierzegger, actress of the film Wild Mouse.

Austrian actress Pia Hierzegger describes the situation of crisis of her character in Wild Mouse, Johanna, a therapist yearning for a child who is blind to her husband’s breakdown but does feel left alone. She explains how it was to work with Josef Hader as her co-star and director, and why humour is essential to talk about serious issues, and she describes Austrian film landscape as rather family-like.

Wild Mouse: When Georg (Josef Hader), a well-known classical music critic, unexpectedly loses his job at an important daily newspaper, he has a complete meltdown. harassing the superior who fired him and spending his days at a theme park with a former schoolmate (Georg Friedrich), without realising that his therapist wife Johanne (Pia Hierzegger) is not doing too well herself. Austrian actor and comedian delivers with his first film as a director an unbridled comedy, with fantastic visuals, about an upper middle class universe where everything suddenly becomes a out of whack.

For the film page on the festival website click here.

The post Pia Hierzegger – Wild Mouse #Berlinale appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Thomas Arslan, director of the film Bright Nights.

Fred’s Chiara Nicoletti meets Thomas Arslan, director of Bright Nights, in competition at the 67th Berlinale. After Gold, Arslan decided it was time to explore a more intimate subject and to tell a story on family relationships and the possibility of rebuilding them after a long silence. Bright Nights is essentially a road movie through the streets and highways in Norway and it stars Tristan Gobel and Austrian actor Georg Friedrich. Sometimes we tend to repeat our parents’ mistake, falling into a pattern, a cycle that we can’t seem to stop. Bright Nights investigates on the possibilities we have of breaking a loop, of really choosing another path and another way to be parents or sons.

Bright Nights: Berlin-based engineer Michael must travel to Norway for his father‘s funeral. His sister is unwilling to go, and Michael is left alone with his 14-year-old son Luis, with whom he has always had minimal contact. Michael tries to bond with Luis while exploring the remote region of northern Norway for a few days. But their first trip together is much more difficult than expected. Daily interaction is unfamiliar territory to both, and Luis obviously holds a grudge because of his father‘s negligence. But during these longest days of summer, Michael is determined to break a bittersweet father-son pattern.

For the film page on the festival website click here.

The post Thomas Arslan – Bright Nights #Berlinale appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Josef Hader, director and actor of the film Wild Mouse.

The well-loved Austrian actor and cabaret comedian Josef Hader tells us more about his first-time experience as a director, the social background he wanted to depict in Wild Mouse, the relationship between the different characters – each with his/her own personal crisis – and the fantastic locations he chose for his exhilarating contemporary comedy.

Wild Mouse: When Georg (Josef Hader), a well-known classical music critic, unexpectedly loses his job at an important daily newspaper, he has a complete meltdown. harassing the superior who fired him and spending his days at a theme park with a former schoolmate (Georg Friedrich), without realising that his therapist wife Johanne (Pia Hierzegger) is not doing too well herself. Austrian actor and comedian delivers with his first film as a director an unbridled comedy, with fantastic visuals, about an upper middle class universe where everything suddenly becomes a out of whack.

For the film page on the festival website click here.

The post Josef Hader – Wild Mouse #Berlinale appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Agnieszka Holland, director of the film Pokot (Spoor).

Agnieszka Holland is back with a new film, Pokot (Spoor), in competition at the 67th Berlinale. She had wanted to adapt a novel by Olga Tokarczuk for such a long time and with Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead, the times has finally come. The thriller adventures of the book’s main character proved to be perfect for a film adaptation. In Pokot or Spoor, the international title, Agnieszka Mandat is a retired old lady who is an english part-time teacher at the local elementary school. She will eventually become involved in series of crimes happenig in her little city in Poland. Director Agnieszka Holland and her protagonist Ms Duszejko are very similar, according to the director as they are both stubborn, fightrs and animal-rights activists. It is actually very difficult not to identify and relate to Ms Duszejko as this is something Agnieszka strongly wanted to achieve. The film is morally ambiguous and it is set in Poland because it was about time that director Holland would talk about her country’s contradictions, a No Country for Old Women.

Pokot (Spoor): Duszejko, an eccentric retired construction engineer, an astrologist and a vegetarian, lives in a small mountain village on the Czech-Polish border. One day her beloved dogs disappear. A few months later she discovers a dead body of her neighbour, a poacher. The only traces leading to the mysterious death are those of roe deer hooves around the house… As time goes by, more grisly killings are discovered. The victims, all hunters, belonged to the local elite. The police investigation proves ineffective. Duszejko has her own theory: all murders were committed by wild animals…

For the film page on the festival website click here.

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