FRED Film Radio - English Channel

After successfully premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, “Sorry, Baby“, Eva Victor’s directorial debut is in Cannes 78 at the Quinzaine Des Cinéastes.

Produced by Barry Jenkins, Adele Romanski, and Mark Ceryak of Pastel (Moonlight, Aftersun) and the winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, Victor’s feature debut, based on her personal experience, depicts the healing journey of Literature professor Agnes (Victor), trying to survive trauma and going on with her life.

“Sorry, Baby” feels also like a cinematic letter to the people that feel stuck in life because of trauma and it is told with delicate but comedic and funny tones.

Eva Victor drives into her writing process and unveils the behind-the-scenes of this project she had never thought of directing herself in the first place. It was Barry Jenkins and his production company Pastel to lead her into the directorial debut’s direction.

The three most aching but beautiful scenes in the film are the ones with Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges and John Carroll Lynch, three actors that Eva Victor successfully relies on for her debut feature.

Distributed by A24 in the United States, “Sorry, Baby“ will soon be released in Italian cinema theaters by I Wonder Pictures.

The post “Sorry, Baby”, interview with director Eva Victor appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

After winning the Palme d’Or in 2021, Julia Ducournau is back competing at the 78th Cannes Film Festival with her new film “Alpha“.

The film is a a coming-of-age exploring themes the French director has already explored in her previous works, like Raw and Titane: Transformation, parent-sons relationships

Besides young Mélissa Boros playing the lead as Alpha, at the centre of the story there are Alpha’s mother, on screen by Goldshifteh Farahani and her brother, Alpha’s uncle, Amin, astonishingly played by Tahar Rahim.

The actor lost almost 20 kg to play the part as he had to embody a person struggling with addiction. He tells us: “This part was a gift for me and I knew that it was inherent to the project to physically match the part.  I had to be thin and at a certain point I was thin enough to make it believable but I decided I needed to go further because I needed to experience that void the people that are struggling with addiction are trying to fill up with the product”.

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French director Julia Ducornau is back in Cannes, the 78t edition with her third film, “Alpha“.

After winning the Palme d’Or in 2021, the filmmaker is again exploring the them of a young girl going through a transformation.

She describes the transformation as an on-going mutation, something that began before the start of the film and continues on after the film is over.

The film is a coming of age as it deals with Alpha (Mélissa Boros)’s struggle to emancipate from the bond she has with her mother, played on screen by Goldshifteh Farahani.

Julia Ducornau introduces, in the film, the threat of a new virus that, similar to Aids in the way it is transmitted and the stigma surrounding it, it turns people’s skin into marble.

The director drives us into this idea of the marble virus and explains how she came up with the idea.

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After “Plan 75” , Chie Hayakawa is back in Cannes, at the 78th edition, in competition with “Renoir.

The film depicts an entrancing poetic journey about resilience, the healing power of the imagination and a traumatized family struggling for connection.

The protagonist is a 5th grade girl, Fuki, who is trying to make peace wit the idea that her father is dying of cancer.

A coming of age story that Chie Hayakawa took inspiration from her own experience when she was little. She says: “While the surrounding plots and circumstances are entirely fictional, the emotions of vague fear and guilt, the breadth of imagination, and the innocent awe felt toward toward fine works of art are drawn from my own youthful emotions”

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After directing the successful short film “Lizard“, Nigerian director Akinola Davis Jr is at  Cannes 78, in the Un certain regard with his debut feature “My Father’s shadow.“

Co-written with his brother Wale, the film is a semi- autobiographical tale set in 1993’s Nigerian election crisis and it follows two brothers on a trip with their estranged father.

“My Father’s shadow” manages to tell us  about the history of a country through the filter of one’s personal experience. Davis Jr. lets us breathe Nigeria of that particular political moment in time but at the same time he makes a delicate coming of age.

“My Father’s shadow” , is also the first film from Nigeria to be selected to play in the Cannes Film Festival.

The post “My father’s shadow”, interview with director Akinola Davis Jr. appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

Zuzana Kirchnerova premiered her poetic and vibrantly sensorial debut, “Caravan“, at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, in the Un Certain Regard sidebar.

We met the Czech director, also a contender for the Caméra d’or, and talked about the physicality of this road movie set in Italy, where a Czech mother and her mentally disabled son have no other choice than to go on the road, as well as her visual approach, the character of Zuza (the third travel companion of Ester and David), and the dichotomy freedom vs. cramped space/situation.

Zuzana Kirchnerova explains that her wish was to shed light on the marginalised life of parents/people who are also caretakers for a family member, and told us about the joys of working with the remarkably expressive young actor who plays David (David Vodstrcil).

“It was really my aim: to be very close to the bodies and to kind of feel the film from the screen, and the visual aspect was also very important for me. I travelled a lot around Italy, taking a lot of photos and trying to catch the atmosphere. I really wanted to have a strong visual element, a poetic one, to counter the heavy subject. The Italian light was crucial, as well as the horizons there, the Italian countryside.”

“Caravan can be expressed through two symbols. One is freedom (we are on the road), but the second is a tiny, tiny space, which is a sort of prison as well.”

“We, as parents of people with mental challenges, we are marginalised because we are usually poor – and that’s true for all family members who are caretakers and get marginalised also because they don’t have money… So I’m really truly happy to be able to give a voice to all those marginalised mothers and fathers who have no voice in our society.”

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Pauline Loquès, a former student in Literature and Law who first quenched her thirst for writing by turning to journalism, then trained as a screenwriter, has developed a distinctive signature since her first film, the 30-minute short “La Vie d’une jeune fille“, on a young woman about to celebrate her hen weekend who learns upon arrival that her fiancé doesn’t want to get married anymore, and can’t bring herself to tell her girlfriends.

In “Nino“, her debut feature, screened in competition at the 64th Critics Week, and in the running for the Caméra d’or of the 78th Cannes International Film Festival, not only does she work from a similar premise, but she also confirms her interest in small, simple things and her desire to depict her characters as earnestly as possible.

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Stefania Ippoliti, as Director of the Toscana Film Commission, met with us in Cannes to talk about its presence at the frstival to promote and present a film that was produced in Tuscany with the support of her office; the film is “Heads or Tails“ (“Testa o Croce”). In our chat, we talked about the involvement in the film, and also about the education programme that we talked about in Berlin.

Stefania Ippoliti pointed out that it is a common fact that film commissions in Italy can work together on the same film, as they are all working to promote Italy: this  is what happened for “Heads or Tails“, that was shot in Tuscany and Piedmont.

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At the 78th Festival de Cannes, we spoke with director Neeraj Ghaywan about his powerful new film “Homebound“, presented in the Un Certain Regard section. Set in a small North Indian village, “Homebound” follows two childhood friends from a marginalized community as they pursue a police job they believe will grant them dignity—only to find themselves tested by desperation, identity, and their evolving bond.

Neeraj Ghaywan describes “Homebound” as “a very universal story of two friends who come from a marginalized background.” The pursuit of a police job becomes a symbolic escape—“They think that if they get a police job, they won’t be shamed again… they won’t be treated badly.” Yet, the deeper journey is one of self-discovery and emotional reckoning.

Inspired by a real-life story published in The New York Times, Ghaywan fictionalized the lives of two boys “traveling during COVID times” to explore themes of systemic injustice and the desire for human dignity.

One of the film’s strongest ethical currents is its insistence on humanizing the unseen. As Ghaywan explains, “Migrants, people of color, minorities—they are only seen as a statistic. But what if we actually find two people out of that statistic?” This is where Homebound breaks from the pattern of tragedy-only narratives.

His intention is clear: “Maybe that is when people will see the human side… and we’ll want to have empathy and kindness.”

For Ghaywan, authenticity trumps dramatic flair. “Just good acting is not enough,” he says. To prepare the cast, he had actors “live in villages, soak in the atmosphere… sit in homes, eat, speak to the people.” The goal: to adopt lived truth rather than imitate it.

He even created a set rule called “code 360,” an emotional protocol where “everyone talks in hushed tones” to match the sensitivity of the scene. This immersive method aims to “replicate the tone of real life on screen.”

While the story is rooted in hardship, Ghaywan insists on emotional balance. “I didn’t want to only show pathos. I wanted to show the humanity—how they love, what jokes they make, what they eat.” Quoting Rilke—“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror—no feeling is final”—he frames Homebound as an emotional mosaic, blending humor, struggle, and warmth.

This commitment to complexity is also a critique of the “urban gaze”, which often patronizes marginalized characters. Ghaywan pushes back: “They also have joy, ambition, teasing, fun… I just didn’t want to make it like ‘two poor people going through life.’”

In an era of silenced voices, Ghaywan sees cinema as a moral action. “For us artists, the only way to speak is through our art,” he says. While he avoids imposing his politics on characters, he believes that storytelling itself is an “act of patriotism… to help people understand what others are going through.”

His influences—Ken Loach, the Dardenne Brothers, and Federico Fellini—speak to his ethos: art should entertain, move, and provoke reflection.

Asked whether “Homebound“ is a film of escape or return, Ghaywan replies: “Wow… actually it is both.” His characters seek to flee their social realities, but also “come back home… accept their identities.” The journey is one of maturation, heartbreak, and ultimately, a return to self.

Ten years after his acclaimed debut Masaan, Ghaywan reflects on his path: “A lot of studios wanted to make films with me… but I was my own enemy.” He waited for a story that “touches my deepest core.” And with “Homebound“, he found it.

The post “Homebound”, interview with the director Neeraj Ghaywan appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

The film sees Mia Threapleton pairing up with Benicio Del Toro in a father-daughter’s story set in the 1950s.

The new feature film follows the magnate “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro), one of the richest men in Europe, and his daughter Liesl, an aspiring nun played by Mia Threapleton in a spy mission’s adventure to accomplish Zorda’s plan to expand and save his empire.

Along this mission, they will be joined by a Norwegian entomologist played by Michael Cera, will meet Prince Farouk, played by Riz Ahmed, in his first Anderson film and will be interrupted many times by terrorist and long time friend of Zorda’s, Sergio (Richard Ayoade).

We met Mia Threapleton, Riz Ahmed and Richard Ayoade to know more about their experience on the set of Wes Anderson and to hear their description of his universe.

The post “The Phoenician Scheme”, interview with actors Mia Threapleton, Riz Ahmed and Richard Ayoade appeared first on Fred Film Radio.