FRED Film Radio - English Channel

Szabolcs Hajdu – Filmmaker – Mirage

FRED’s Matt Micucci meets acclaimed Hungarian film director Szabolcs Hajdu, who presented his latest work “Mirage” in the World Cinema Panorama section of the 22nd Febiofest – Prague International Film Festival.

He talks about the array of influences both artistic and political that influenced “Mirage”, the contrast of the universal and regional potential of the modern western genre and how he came to cast the roles in the film.

Plot: A lone African footballer wanders through the sparsely inhabited Hungarian countryside. As soon as he reaches a farm, he realizes that he has entered a trap run by local modern slaveholders who intend to rob him of his freedom as well as of his well-guarded secret.

The Hungarian-Slovak meditative “Eastern” enchants with its captivating depiction of the landscape and patient narration, which unpredictably reveals the individual motives. The film by the celebrated director of the previous generation was introduced at last year’s festival in Toronto.

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Catarina Von Richthofen – wife of filmmaker Oswald Von Richthofen – 35 Cows and a Kalashnikov

FRED’s Matt Micucci interview Catarina Von Richtofen, wife of the filmmaker Oswald von Richthofen, who sadly passed away but whose film “35 Cows and a Kalashnikov” is still travelling the world, mesmerising audiences at international festivals, including Prague, where we meet Catarina at the 22nd edition of Febiofest – Prague International Film Festival.

Plot: The beautiful images paint a loving, attentive portrait of African pride and beauty. The Surma tribe lives in the remote Omo valley in the south of Ethiopia. The Surma are cattle farmers and warriors but possess real artistry when it comes to painting their own naked bodies. In Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo, there is a group of colourfully dressed dandies who are living by the credo “You are what you wear”. Meanwhile, in vibrant Kinshasa, local wrestlers are preparing for a contest, among them a girl, an albino named Texas, and some voodoo practitioners.

All of them are maintaining a lifestyle in which tradition, religion and modern African society intertwine. 35 Cows and a Kalashnikov will illuminate your view of the Dark Continent.

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Akadimia Platonos is a district located to the northwest of the centre of the Greek capital, Athens. This area took its name from Plato’s Academy. It is densely populated with people who mostly live in very large, low, two-storey buildings.

This is the setting for the film Akadimia Platonos, written and directed by the Greek, Filippos Tsitos. The film, screened at the Locarno Film Festival in 2009, is centred on the key issue of the intercultural tensions that are soaring in contemporary Greece precisely at the time when international public opinion began to become aware of the economic crisis. Presented in the form of a comedy, the film tells the story of the owners of four little stores who open the shutters of their shops every day and sit together drinking and making racist comments about the Chinese and Albanian workers on the construction sites nearby. The mother of one of them, who suffers from severe amnesia, introduces a second key issue in the story, that of memory and the ability to recast the past in the light of the present.

Whereas, in the Academy of Philosophy inspired by Plato, idealism and the world order were discussed, in the suburban square of Akadimia Platonos, the descendants of Ancient Greek culture drink, play football and insult immigrants. This ironic depiction emphasises the contrast between the exchanges of xenophobic remarks and the ancient Platonic dialogues on collectivism and the construction of ideal cities.

Born in Athens in 1966, Filippos Tsitos studied marketing at the University of Athens and began working as a director of photography and assistant director on several documentary films, and as a producer of a number of music programmes for  radio. He then moved to Germany (the country that co-produced Akadimia Platonos with Greece), specialising in direction at the German Film and Television Academy of Berlin. His narrative skills emerged in the short films he directed, especially Parlez-moi d’amour, winner of the German Short Film Award in 1994, which told the story of two immigrants in Germany, a Greek and a Russian, who meet in a bar and try and hold a conversation even though they do not speak the same language. His debut feature film, My Sweet Home, was selected at the Berlin Festival in 2001 and tells the amusing story of a party before the wedding of a German woman and an American in exile.

Tsitos explains that “it was being away from Greece, leaving my country, that made me want to study and understand it.” And he adds: “It was after I came to Berlin that I became really interested in my origins. I started to write stories and create my personal vision of Greece.  In order to develop a sharp and original perspective, I needed to have some distance from the geographical point of view.

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Film: Illégal (2010)

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Name of school: Robert Napier School

Location: Medway, United Kingdom

Film: Illégal (2010)

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Paul Haggis – director – Third Person

Oscar-winning writer and director Paul Haggis chose Rome and its TEATRO GOLDEN to direct a four days Master Class ( two Masterclasses of two days each) on ACTING techniques.

By analizying his films, Haggiswill teach 40 actors and more than 200 auditors of actors, producers, writers and directors how complex and tricky can the adaption of the script into images. In the second two days of the master class he will work with the 40 actors selected for a special showcase taking place on Saturday 14th at the Teatro Golden in Rome.

Paul Haggis’ Master Class has been produced by Federica Picone and Mark Olan Dresen for HOLLYWOOD IN ROME, by Andrea Maia for Teatro Golden in partnership with e-Talenta/Castforward.

On the occasion of the press conference announcing the Master class, Paul Haggis talks about his new film THIRD PERSON, which will be released in Italy on April 2015 distributed by M2 Pictures.

The film tells three inter-connected love stories that take place in Paris, New York and Rome. Paris: Michael, a writer who recently left his wife Elaine, receives a visit from his lover Anna. The story explores their very complicated on/off relationship due to her inability to commit because of a terrible secret.

New York: Julia, an ex-soap opera actress turned hotel maid is accused of harming her young naive child, a charge which she firmly denies. As a result of these charges, he is now in the custody of her boyfriend Rick who is trying everything in his power to take the boy away from her.

Julia, herself, is trying at all costs to regain custody of her son. Rome: Scott, an American business man on a trip to Italy, falls in love with an Albanian gypsy (Roma) woman, Monika.

Scott is inevitably drawn into a plot where he tries to free Monica’s daughter who has been kidnapped by a Russian gangster and is being held for ransom. Emotions run high as the viewer and Scott question whether this is a set up or not.

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Grainne Humphreys – festival director – Jameson Dublin International Film Festival

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Gràinne Humphreys, festival director of Ireland’s premiere film festival – the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival (JDIFF), which returns to the Irish capital city for its 13th edition and runs from the 19th to the 29th of March. This year the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival is even more “international”, with films from 38 different countries around the world. Gràinne also highlights some of the most impressive titles on the programme, and talks with us about another great element of the JDIFF, the illustrious guests, which this year includes big names such as Russell Crowe, Alan Rickman and Julie Andrews.

Click here to see the full Jameson Dublin International Film Festival Programme 2015

The 13th Jameson Dublin International Film Festival will take place from the19th – 29th March 2015. The full programme is now available to view from the festival website jdiff.com. Tickets can be booked online atjdiff.com or in person at the Festival Box Ofiice on 13 Lower Ormond Quay, or at Ticket Offices in Cineworld or the Light House from 14th March.

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Illégal is the second feature film by Olivier Masset-Depasse, a Belgian director born in Charleroi in 1971. The film is a co-production between Belgium, France and Luxembourg with an overall budget of around €2.2 million. The production focused on the need to mirror the physical and human reality of the places and characters in the story to the utmost, even if the temporary detention centre for migrants, where most of the action takes place, was reconstructed in an abandoned industrial building.

The film was presented at the Cannes Festival’s Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in 2010 and the Belgians chose it as a candidate for the Oscars, in the category of best foreign film, although it didn’t reach the top-five shortlist.

Before Illégal, Masset-Depasse directed two short films, Chambre Froide in 2000 and Dans l’ombre in 2004, both featuring decisive female characters who are determined to reach their objectives at all costs. Both films were great critical successes, picking up around 60 prizes and awards at various European and international festivals. Following this success, the Belgian director made his first feature film in 2006 entitled Cages, which is the story of a passionate but destructive love, and was invited to many international festivals, including Toronto and Rome. The film was met with great critical acclaim in Belgium and created great excitement among the public.

A direct link between Masset-Depasse’s previous films and Illégal is, once again, the centrality of a female character, who must fight to defend her identity and emotions. What stands out most is the presence in all four films of the same leading actress, Anne Coesens, whom the Belgian director describes in the following way: “She is a Stradivarius. With an instrument like that, you don’t change a thing: If you play it, you never tire of it. I have shot all my films with her. I think I understand what rings true in a role, but with Anne I can really go further.  With her, more than with others, I truly become an actor’s director. Our symbiosis is a very positive influence on my films, particularly on this one.”

Presenting the film, Masset-Depasse explained how the idea came about to put an illegal immigrant at the centre of the story. “Many films have shown what people are ready to go through to stay here, in our country. One day, I discovered that I was living 15 kilometres from an administrative detention centre for those who have been found without the documents required to live in our country. I wanted to find out more. So I was often in the field, meeting illegal immigrants, but also immigration agents and the police. I decided not to make a documentary, but a work of fiction, because it allows a deeper exploration of the point of view of the various characters: I was trying to achieve something more universal. Moreover, I wanted to treat the subject like a psychological thriller. While writing the film, I often thought about Alan Parker’s Midnight Express, although I wanted the film to be realistic and based on in-depth research. Everything that is seen in the film actually happened, at least once.”

After Illégal, in 2015, Masset-Depasse made the TV movie Le sanctuaire presented in January at the International Festival of Audio-visual Programming in Biarritz.

Michele Marangi

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Valerie Heine – director and producer

FRED’s Nicolò Comotti meets with Valerie Heine, talented director here in Berlin as part of Berlinale Talents 2015.

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Ayo – actress – Murder in Pacot

FRED’s Angelo Acerbi meets Ayo, actress in Raoul Peck’s film “Murder in Pacot” from the 65th Berlin International Film Festival.

Knowing the reasons for an artistic choice is always fascinating. Talking to Ayo reveals to us her issues of being an artist, regardless if you act or sing, and also the impact that such a close look to a tragedy such as the Haiti earthquake had on her as a woman, a mother and a singer. An insightful talk with a wonderful woman

Plot: Haiti after the devastating earthquake of 2010. Streets, houses and bridges have collapsed and men in white protective gear are retrieving thousands of dead bodies. A middle-class couple’s large home in Port-au-Prince has also been badly damaged. A building authority orders the owners to renovate immediately otherwise their house will be pulled down. To raise the money needed for this, the couple moves into the former servants’ quarters and rents out the only habitable room in the house to the head of an international aid organisation named Alex. But the young man is not alone. He is accompanied by a 17-year-old Haitian woman named Andrémise, who wants to change her name to Jennifer in the hope that this will help her to meet foreigners. Andrémise’s provocative and positive approach to life and love soon throws the cat among the pigeons.

After his documentary Fatal Assistance Raoul Peck now takes a look at the effect of the earthquake on the country’s middle-class. Inspired by Pasolini’s classic 1968 work Teorema, Peck’s film is an intense and intimate drama about social contrasts that also poses fundamental questions about responsibility and justice in the face of catastrophe.

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