FRED Film Radio - English Channel

Presented as a special screening at the 18th Rome Film Fest, “Posso Entrare? ( Can I come in) – An Ode to Naples“ is Trudie Styler documentary and love letter to the Italian city.

To try to discover and understand Naples,Styler gathered musicians, actors, priests, people from the street and knocked on their doors.

“I think it would take a lifetime to get to know Naples but the city let me in, the people let me in” she confesses as there are a thousand questions to ask Naples and there could be ten thousand different answers.

Trudie Styler walks the streets of Naples and talks to the people that made it survive Camorra and criminality and turned it into the theatre- music – cinema – arts driven city it is today.

With famous singer and rapper Clementino summing up the history of Naples in his original and opening song Neapolis, Posso entrare? counts on the participation of many essential people for the city: from actor Francesco Di Leva, artist and painter, writer Roberto Saviano to, among the others, sewer Lorenzo Martone, housewife Silvia Matrone, taxi driver Vincenzo Palumbo and chef Alfonso Iaccarino.

The film will come out in Italian Cinema theaters as an event on 6-7-8 november, 2023

The post “Posso Entrare? – An Ode to Naples” , interview with director Trudie Styler appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

At the 18th edition of the Rome Film Fest, Jeremy Piven and his sister Shira Piven presented their first film together, “The Performance”, in the Grand Public section.

The film is an adaptation of the story by Arthur Miller published in The New Yorker and sees the dancer’s company invited – during a European tour– to perform in Berlin. It was a unique show, the culmination of a career, which, however, could take them on stage in front of Adolf Hitler in 1937.

‘The Performance” was a true labour of love for Jeremy Piven, who credits his mother with introducing him to what he calls the role of his career. “My mother gave me the Arthur Miller piece that appeared in the New Yorker and said, ‘I think you’d like the story and I see you well in the role of Harold.’ My sister Shira and I grew up in the theatre and assimilated the work of playwrights. We come from a family of theater people, both of our parents were actors, directors and teachers. My mother has been my acting teacher since I was 8 years old, and Shira is the best actors director I have ever worked with, so it became a family project.”

The actor and Shira Piven also talked to FRED Film Radio about the relevance of Arthur Miller and his works nowadays, an author who is still capable of talking about humanity and its inner turmoil.

It took many years to make the film, which allowed Jeremy Piven to dedicate himself even more to dancing, becoming an excellent tap dancer. Piven said: “I care a lot about Harold; he is an exceptional character, and I was thrilled by the idea of being able to play him to the fullest.”

The protagonist of “The Performance” also shared his thoughts about the ambition of his character and his willingness to be a successful dancer.

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It all started with an exercise with a fellow director and then “Woken“, first feature film by Alan Friel came to life and began the Irish director’s debut. “Woken“is screening at the 23rd Science + Fiction festival in the Spazio Italia section as an italian premiere and it is a co-production between Ireland and Italy. The film has been shot in Ireland and post-produced in Rome.

As it depicts a woman waking up pregnant, in an isolated island, with no memory of who she is or was, discovering the human race is close to extinction because of a pandemic, “Woken” feels somehow familiar even if it is set in a dystopian future.

Alan Friel reveals that he has been working on “Woken” a long time before the Covid-19 pandemic and that’s why in the film he’s more focusing on provoking a debate about nature,  environment and how the human race is actually contributing on making the world a difficult place to live in.

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Rome Film Fest 2023 hosted the world premiere of “In Bed with Gondry” by François Nemeta, the second documentary of the french director about Gondry’s world, after “Michel Gondry Do It Yourself”, from October 31th on iwonderfull.it.

Over the course of a sleepless night the eclectic filmmaker, of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and the last “The Book of Solutions”, discusses his influences, his dreams and nightmares and reveals the secrets of his original and unparalleled creative process.

“This film shows the darker and nocturne side of Michel. The two documentaries are complementary, about a man, a genius. There are two sides of the same filmmaker“, Nemeta explains.

How is important the imagination in a movie? “Michel said to me: don’t be shy about your own ideas, also if there are bizarre. Imagination is always important”, director answers. Sometimes even a movie can be a nightmare. “Michel had bad moments in his career, but thanks to his creativity he managed to get out of them“, Nemeta says.

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“I was looking for a way to make a film about what happens when famous people ‘transgress’ and understand how they deal with that experience and how they seek forgiveness from society” says director Kevin Macdonald when talking about the genesis of his new documentary, “High and Low:John Galliano” about the rise and fall of the famous designer.

Presented at the 18th Rome Film Fest, the film is a result of a 6 hour interview that MacDonald did to Galliano about his career and his mistakes, including that one video that kind of ruined his life as he was caught using shocking antisemitic and racist insults.

Featuring conversations with Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Penelope Cruz, Charlize Theron, Anna Wintour, Edward Enninful, Boris Cyrulnik, Hamish Bowles, and Sidney Toledano, among others, the documentary is about “what happens when you do something utterly unacceptable; how do you find forgiveness and redemption? Should you be forgiven?”. Macdonald states that he intended this film to be thought-provoking and nuanced and that the audiences leave questioning and discussing after they leave the theatre.

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This year’s JIFF presents the biggest ever selection of new Australian films, world premieres of three documentaries and five shorts, and TV series. New Jewish filmmaking voices supported via JIFF short film fund with this year’s winners screening as part of a unique showcase shorts slot.

The program includes a focus on Yiddish Culture with two Yiddish language films, SHTTL and Burning Off The Page. JIFF also presents, fresh from Cannes, “The Goldman Case“, “Valeria Gets Married“, winner at Haifa Film Festival and Shanghai Film Festival, and three of the most powerful Holocaust films of the year, “The Zone of Interest“,” Stella. A Life.” and “Filip“.

The post “Jewish International Film Festival” interview with artistic director Eddie Tamir appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

After winning Best film in the Un Certain Regard section at the latest Cannes Film Festival, “How to have sex“ by Molly Manning Walker lands in Rome at Alice nella Città as the opening film.

The DOP turned director Walker presents the film with her protagonist, Mia McKenna Bruce, who plays Tara, a girl embarking on a summer trip after graduation with two friends and discovering the worst about adult life and sexual encounters.

“I wanted to write story about the pressure young people have on each other to have sex” explains Manning Walker as she tells us more about the summer trip she took with some friends and whose memories inspired the making of the film. Molly Manning Walker recalls an episode of her trip, in which she felt that the public sexual act she was assisting at, felt wrong and awkward but she didn’t call it so as she thought she was the only one to think it this way. Years after, she discovered that she and her friends were all experiencing that same kind of sexual pressure, the same one she depicted in How to have sex, adapting the story to nowadays teenagers.

The director explains how she had pictured Tara, the main character and how she found Mia McKenna Bruce, an actress capable of showing both the enthusiasm of being young and the trauma caused by a very wrong first encounter with sex and an abusive male figure.

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This year, the Rome Film Festival dedicates a tribute section to the great Maria Callas on the centenary of her birth. Among the films in program, “Callas Paris, 1958” by Tom Volf, is a unique opportunity to see and discover the great Diva of opera music on the occasion of her concert at the Paris Opera in 1958.

In the interview for FRED Film Radio, director Tom Volf tells us about the emotion of discovering the reels of the 1958 Maria Callas concert, unique material that finally allowed us to show what had been one of the first events broadcast live on television at that time: “Until today, we only knew about that historic performance through snippets of second-grade quality video.”

Volf says it took two years to restore the reels: “In the new footage, there were many new details, the lights, the colours. We had photos from that evening, so we decided to face the challenge of restoring in colour the performance of that evening.”

We couldn’t help but ask Tom Volf, also president of the Maria Callas Foundation, what makes Maria Callas, even today, a legendary icon and THE Diva par excellence. “You know, originally, the word Diva comes from Divine. Today, it is misused a bit. But I would say that she had that “something”. That mysterious something in her voice, which seems to come from out of nowhere, and we are so moved when we listen to her.”

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The 19th Zurich Film Festival (Sept 28 – Oct 8) is paying tribute to  German actress Diane Kruger for her outstanding career and great versatility, awarding her with the Golden Eye Award for her achievements. The actress is also presenting in Zurich, her most recent movie “Visions” by Yann Gozlan as an international premiere.

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With a Mexican superstar like Eugenio Derbez as the protagonist, “Radical“ by Christopher Zalla, screening at the 19th Zurich Film Festival after winning the Sundance FF Audience Award, tells the real story of revolutionary teacher Sergio Juarez, who found a way to let his sixth grade kids get curious and discover what they wanted to learn in school and in the real world.

It was Eugenio Derbez, as producer and friend of Zalla, to call him and get him on board of the film project. Zalla defines this film his second chance.

“Radical” is a film about uncovering potential and learning to dream and hope our dreams can eventually come true. Despite his playing the real teacher who inspired the story and the film, Radical focuses on the kids and the little actors leading the narration: Jennifer Trejo and Mia Fernanda Solis. This is the reason why the film never incur in teaching a lesson or imposing a vision.

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