FRED Film Radio - English Channel

Edwina Findley – Actress – Free In Deed.

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti meets versatile and eclectic actress Edwina Findley, intense protagonist of Jake Mahaffy‘s FREE IN DEED, in competition at the 72nd Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti section, in which it was awarded the Best Film Prize.

In the film Edwina plays Melva Neddy, a single mother desperately looking for a cure to her son’s autism in a society in which she’s left with no help from social services or healthcare system. Edwina Findley explains how the film explores the difficulty of judging a woman in her character’ situation and how, even death, can de liberating in a very desperate sense.

FREE IN DEED: Set in the distinctive world of storefront churches, and based on actual events, Free in Deed depicts one man’s attempts to perform a miracle. When a single mother brings her young boy to church for healing, this lonely pentecostal minister is forced to confront the seemingly incurable illness of the child… and his own demons as well. The more he prays, the more things seem to spiral out of his control.

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Jake Mahaffy – Director – Free In Deed.

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti meets Jake Mahaffy, director of the film FREE IN DEED. The film was presented in the Orizzonti section of the 72nd Venice Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Film.

Based on true events the film find its inspiration in a news story of twelve years ago about an actual faith healing gone wrong. Shot in a documentary style, the story takes place mainly in a church where the protagonist, a single mother with two kids, relies all her hopes to cure her child from autism, in this healer priest’s hands.

FREE IN DEED: Set in the distinctive world of storefront churches, and based on actual events, Free in Deed depicts one man’s attempts to perform a miracle. When a single mother brings her young boy to church for healing, this lonely pentecostal minister is forced to confront the seemingly incurable illness of the child… and his own demons as well. The more he prays, the more things seem to spiral out of his control.

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Amos Gitai – Director – Rabin, the Last Day

FRED’s Bénédicte Prot interview director Amos Gitai, who presented his latest film RABIN, THE LAST DAY in competition at the 72nd edition of the Venice Film Festival.

Amos Gitai explains how he wanted, with this film, to remind us of a time when there was still hope, and talks about the approach he chose to recount, again, the assassination of Rabin.

RABIN, THE LAST DAY: When Premier Minister Yitzhak Rabin fell, shot, twenty years ago, in Tel Aviv, in a few seconds, the face of Israel changed forever, and all hope of finding peace in the Middle-East was buried. Through archive material and reconstitutions, especially of the official inquiry, Amos Gitai looks into the senseless gesture of an intoxicated Israeli nationalist and into the absurd way in which the country reacted the following months, and for years to come.

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Arturo Ripstein (Director), Paz Alicia Garciadiego (Screenwriter) – Bleak Street (La Calle de la Amargura).

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews the great Mexican filmmaker Arturo Ripstein and his wife, his screenwriter and collaborator Paz Alicia Garciadiego. The two presented their latest work BLEAK STREET (La Calle de la Amargura) out of competition at the 72nd Venice Film Festival.

Arturo Ripstein and Paz Alicia Garciadiego talk to us about the film’s air of timelessness, aided by the choice of employing black and white photography. Ripstein also stops to give us his opinion of black and white photography and its power in general. Garciadiego then talks about where the inspiration of the story came from, and gives us an insightful summation of the backdrop and many influences that were put together and which contribute to the greatness of their latest work.

On top of this, we focus on the human take on the story’s peculiar characters, and the sense of humour that is a true driving force in the film. The two together make the story all the more powerful, dramatic but also very enjoyable and entertaining.

BLEAK STREET (La Calle de la Amargura): In the early morning hours, two elderly whores go back to their hovels. They are not tired from working. They are tired of not doing so. One has problems at home with her teenage daughter and her cross-dressing husband; the other, with her loneliness. But that night, they have a date to celebrate the victory in the ring of two wrestlers, twin midgets wearing masks. At the hourly hotel, in order to rob the tiny men of their earnings, they drug them with eye drops. But the dose proves fatal. They murder them unintentionally. Scared and confused, they decide to hide from the police and run away together to live, as they always have, on Bleak Street. They are arrested.

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Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan – voice actors – Anomalisa

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti meets Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan who respectively give the voices to Lisa and EVERYBODY ELSE (Noonan plays all the remaining characters except for the 2 protagonists) in the film by Charlie Kauffman and Duke Johnson, ANOMALISA. The film was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 72nd edition of the Venice Film Festival.

ANOMALISA: Michael Stone, an author of books on the subject of customer service, struggle with his inability to connect to people. One night, while on a routine business trip, he meets a stranger who changes his world view.

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Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson – Directors – Anomalisa

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti meets Charlie Kauffman (Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, Synedoche New York) and Duke Johnson, co-directors of the film ANOMALISA, in competition at the 72nd edition of the Venice International Film Festival, where it was awarded the Grand Jury Prize.

ANOMALISA was originally a theatre-sound play with the same actors of the film, David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh. Duke Johnson got on board of the project as an expert stop motion animation producer and director. Kaufman and Johnson decided to use a unique voice over technique (all played by Tom Noonan) and to leave the seams on the faces of Michael (Thewlis), Lisa ( Leigh) and the other characters (Noonan).

ANOMALISA: Michael Stone, an author of books on the subject of customer service, struggle with his inability to connect to people. One night, while on a routine business trip, he meets a stranger who changes his world view.

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Alexander Sokurov – Director – Francofonia

FRED’s Bénédicte Prot interviews director Alexander Sokurov, who presented his latest work FRANCOFONIA in competition at the 72nd Venice Film Festival. tells us more about the intentions behind his cinematic pyramid on the Louvre and talks about dictators, life, death, and beauty.

FRANCOFONIA: As he watches the wreck of a ship carrying works of art through a webcam, Russian maestro Alexander Sokurov muses on Paris and the rescue of the Louvre during the German Occupation by its director Jacques Jaujard and the nazi officer in charge of the Kunstschutz, Franziskus Wolff-Metternich.

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Zhao Liang – Filmmaker – Behemoth

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews filmmaker Zhao Liang, who presented his powerful, breathtaking documentary BEHEMOTH in the main competition of the 72nd Venice Film Festival.

He talks to us about how he sees this documentary as a kind of prophecy and mentions all the important environmental themes which he touches. He also talks about his stylistic approach and the influence from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.

On top of this Zhao Liang also gives a more general overview of the way in which he likes to work and the way in which he likes to construct his features, in this case by blending footage of a realistic nature with more poetic and imagined ones, which is a testimony to his interest in all of the arts, and not just filmmaking.

BEHEMOTH: Under the sun, the heavenly beauty of grasslands will soon be covered by the raging dust of mines. Facing the ashes and noises caused by heavy mining , the herdsmen have no choice but to leave as the meadow areas dwindle. In the moonlight, iron mines are brightly lit throughout the night. Workers who operate the drilling machines must stay awake. The fight is tortuous, against the machine and against themselves. Meanwhile, coal miners are busy filling trucks with coals. Wearing a coal-dust mask, they become ghost-like creatures. An endless line of trucks will transport all the coals and iron ores to the iron works. There traps another crowd of souls, being baked in hell. In the hospital, time hangs heavy on miners’ hands. After decades of breathing coal dust, death is just around the corner. They are living the reality of purgatory, but there will be no paradise.

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Margita Gosheva – actress – The Lesson (Urok)

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Margita Gosheva, lead actress in the film THE LESSON (Urok) by Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov, Bulgarian film and one of the finalists of the 2015 LUX Prize. The film was also screened at the 72nd Venice Film Festival.

Margita talks to us about her journey with the film, and reveals to us that the story was based on true events, and shot on little money with a tight budget. Given the success the film has had thus far, that is quite impressive! We talks with her about the challenge of playing a role based on a true and living person, and whether she felt any responsibilities in her interpretation.

But she also talks about her collaboration with the filmmakers, who allowed her plenty of room for improvisation.

Magrita also mentions her theatrical background, and talks about the differences between acting for the cinema and acting for the theatre.

THE LESSON: In a small Bulgarian town Nadezhda, a young teacher, is looking for the robber in her class so she can teach him a lesson about right and wrong. But when she gets in debt to loan sharks, can she find the right way out herself?

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Paolo Bertolin – Consultant on South East Asian films – Venice Film Festival

FRED’s Nicolò Comotti interviews Paolo Bertolin, consultant of the VENICE FILM FESTIVAL on South East Asian films. We meet him at the 72nd edition of the Venice Film Festival. Paolo Bertolin unveils some of the secrets (and perks) of fulfilling this particular role, and gives us a brief overview of the programme of this year’s edition of the oldest and one of the most prestigious film festivals of the year in the world.

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