FRED Film Radio - English Channel

FRED Film Radio - English Channel

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FRED Film Radio - English Channel episodes

  • “Promised Sky”, an interview with director Erige Sehiri

    French-Tunisian director and producer Erige Sehiri opened the Un Certain Regard section of the 78th Cannes Film Festival with “Promised Sky (Promis le ciel)“, a colourful and energetic tale on three Sub-Saharan women of different ages, backgrounds and situations – a pastor, a student, and an exiled mother, played by Aïssa Maïga, Laetitia Ky and newcomer Déborah Christelle Naney, respectively – stuck in Tunis on their way to a (hypothetical) better life.

    “Promised Sky” is Sehiri‘s second feature film after “Under the Fig Trees“, screened in Cannes in 2022, at the Directors’ Fortnight, and chosen as the Tunisian submission for the Academy Award for the Best International Feature Film. Before that, she made and produced, through her company Henia, various Tunisian author-driven documentaries, including her breakout feature documentary, “Railway Men” (2018).

    On the situation of in-betweenness of the three main protagonists we meet in Tunis
    “I felt like there were many stories about migration, but we were missing a link in the chain: we have stories about people arriving in Europe, migrants struggling in Europe, but we don’t have the stories from before, when they are stopped somewhere, stopped or stuck, depending on the character. Now there is a barrier in Europe, so North Africa becomes this stop.“
    On the female solidarity and community that shines since the very first minutes
    “The idea is that what you arrive in the foreign country, you can live with people with whom you would never live in your own country. That’s what happens here: Marie the pastor is welcoming the student and she welcoming a child, and she’s welcoming Naney, a girl who’s doing shady businesses. In real life, if they were from the same country but from different social classes, their paths probably wouldn’t cross so much, but because they’re in a foreign country, where it’s difficult, they become a family.“
    On the presence of Kenza, the little isolated girl whose very origins are difficult to trace
    “A few months before the shoot, when I was going to Sunday services for my research and spending time with the community, I met this little six-year-old girl, and one day, I went back to the church and I asked where she was, because I didn’t see her anymore (…), and I was told that she crossed over with her mother, and that they died in the Mediterranean Sea, that unfortunately they didn’t make it. I was devastated and I started thinking about the children, who didn’t choose that. And then I heard of survivors, children survivors, who don’t know where their parents are. For me, it asks the question of who is responsible for these children: is it the state they’re in, even though the state is against them as a community, or is it the community itself.“
    On the energetic, thoughtful, and colourful cinematography 
    I have the best DOP, Frida Marzouk, she’s a friend, and we talked a lot about the colours and when I went to Naney’s place, her room in real life, and she opened her closet, she had a lot of pink, and she had the pink dress that is in the film, and I said ‘Oh my God, that’s the colour of Naney!’ And the blue of course is the sea, the sky, and all these promises of something else, And those became the two colours of the film: blue and pink.”

     

    The post “Promised Sky”, an interview with director Erige Sehiri appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

    12 min
  • “I Only Rest in the Storm”, an interview with director Pedro Pinho
    With “I Only Rest in the Storm“, Portuguese director Pedro Pinho is back on the Croisette – eight years after presenting his first fiction feature, the nearly 3-hour-long social musical/spoken film “The Nothing Factory“, at the Directors Fortnight –, this time in the Un Certain Regard sidebar. His new formidable effort (at three hours and a half which frankly go by without one’s noticing or minding), incredibly nuanced and humanistic, set in Guinea-Bissau around the story of a Portuguese expert meant to evaluate the ecological and social impact of the construction of a road through traditional rice plantations, opens a vertiginous array of paths of reflection upon his presence and the presence of other expats (from former Portuguses colonies, humanitary organisations) and foreign workers, the variety within the local population, certain power dynamics…
    On the continuity between this film set in Africa and Pedro Pinho’s first feature, set in a factory
    “The proposal of this film was to take further the possibility of working with the word, the spoken word and political views as cinematic material. How can we transform something that is not cinematic at all into something that has cinematic value.“
    About the fact that dualisms are a persistent way of understanding the world, but are actually never quite so clear
    “The subject of identity and fluidity is a very strong presence in the film. This idea of creating a polyphony of perspectives also favours a blurring of the borders of the self – who am I? Who am i in relation to others? How do the others see me?“
    On polyphony, voices and languages
    “When I first went to this part of the world, I was struck by the fact that people, children, can speak up to four or five languages – the language of the street, of the mother, of the father, of the coloniser, the official language –, so immediately, they are used to dealing with that proliferation of cultures and ways of thinking, whilst Europe is more monolithic and imposed that upon the world. (…) There are many languages in the film and there’s also a game of who understands who.”
    On continuing to learn throughout the shoot
    “The writing process was ongoing until the end of the shoot, and of course even during the editing, but it was really informed by the actors and the people that we met along the way during the shoot.”

    The post “I Only Rest in the Storm”, an interview with director Pedro Pinho appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

    14 min
  • Paolo Manera, director of Film Commission Torino Piemonte

    We meet in Cannes at the Film market with Paolo Manera director of the Film Commission Torino Piemonte, one of the oldest and most active film commission in Italy, in Cannes to celebrate with an event together with longtime partners of the commission the 25 years of activity.

    A long path, always ready to look at the future

    Paolo Manera talks about the events in Cannes but he also has a specific attitude that his  commission has followed and that he believes to be the best if not only way to develop and grow, that he wants to share: looking at the future, and be ready to innovate and test new ideas and new possibilities even if they can seem difficult or strange. this si how the film commission Torino Piemonte grew reaching goals that were unthinkable at the beginning.

    The post Paolo Manera, director of Film Commission Torino Piemonte appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

    9 min
  • “Reedland”, interview with the director Sven Bresser

    “Reedland” by Sven Bresser is included in the selection for the Critics’ Week, at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. The film ticks all the boxes of the murder mystery genre, but it elevates and become a surprising and fascinating tale about the life of a  simple man in the rural Netherlands facing new challenges inside of himself. An astounding attention for framing and the vision on nature in such a peculiar way that the audience is absorbed in this story and its images.

    Places I knew, and a nature I loved and feared at the same time

    Sven Bresser knew the region of the Netherlands where “Reedland” takes place. His childhood was spent there too, and visiting and living the life of reed cutters made the rest. The perception of nature is one of love and fascination but also of fear as it becomes a place where things and tragedies can be hidden – like the body of a dead girl.

    A splendid lead character, played by a non actor

    The strength of ” Reedland” lays on the lead character, Johan, played by a real reed cutter in such a powerful and striking way. Sven Bresser tells us that the process fo directing a non actor was peculiar and that the main secret has been of give him space in the movements and not telling him too much about the scenes, letting him living them in his own terms

    The post “Reedland”, interview with the director Sven Bresser appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

    17 min
  • “Kika”, an interview with director Alexe Poukine

    Alexe Poukine is in competition at the 64th Critics Week of the 78th Cannes Film Festival with her first fiction feature, “Kika“, after several documentaries – including the multi-award-winning “Who Cares?“, where medical students and experienced care workers were put in front of actors portraying patients for some case simulations – and the mid-length film “Palma” – where she played the protagonist, inspired by her own life as a struggling mother, and which won the Jury Prize at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, amongst others.

    “Kika“, whilst maintaining strong ties with reality and presenting a nicely fleshed set of characters evading all stereotypes (including real-life sex workers), transports the viewer, together with the endearing eponymous character (played by Manon Clavel), into a quirky universe terming with absurd and hilarious situations which makes for many laughs, but also touches with the warmth and humanity it conveys.
    On writing a film which broaches so many different subjects
    Alexe Poukine: “In the original script, there were so many layers, so Thomas Van Zuylen came in to cowrite with me, three years after I began, he suggested we should cut some of them, but I wouldn’t. It was very hard to keep all these layers, but for me, it was like making lasagna: I wanted the film to be dense, because I don’t like films that you can sum up easily – which is why I hate pitching. In fact, during the shoot, people sometimes stopped us on the street, to ask what the film was about, and each member of the crew was saying something different. It was very fun for me to see they didn’t think we were talking about the same thing. The only scenes we cut, during the editing, involved a rat.”
    On the many rooms, flats, stairwells, etc. we visit throughout the film  
    “With the DOP Colin Leveque, we wanted Kika to always be in movement, so we mainly tried to find settings large enough to follow her all the time, because we wanted her to move all the time… What I like is that the only place where she can get intimacy is a hotel room, which is quite ambiguous because it’s not private – it’s yours for an hour, and you have to pay for this intimacy. All film long, she’s just trying to find a place, like in the book A Room of One’s Own. I was thinking about this all the time: how to find a place, your place, where you can just be.”

    The post “Kika”, an interview with director Alexe Poukine appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

    13 min
  • “Adam’s Sake”, interview with actress and Shooting Star 2022 Anamaria Vartolomei

    Belgian director Laura Wandel is back in Cannes with her second feature film, Adam’s sake.

    The film, in competition at the Semaine de la critique, relies entirely on two extraordinary protagonists Léa Drucker and Anamaria Vartolomei, playing respectively a nurse and a young mother whose child has been hospitalized for malnutrition.

    Anamaria Vartolomei, who became well known to the international audience thanks to the 2021 Venice Golden Lion’s winner L’Événement, was selected to represent France at the 2022 Berlinale Shooting stars.

    In collaboration with the European Film promotion (EFP), founder of the Shooting stars programme, we interviewed Anamaria Vartolomei, among the 16 former Shooting Stars in the Cannes line-up this year.

    The EFP is a network of film institutions from 37 European countries, bringing European films and talent to the attention of the international industry and media and the Shooting stars project brings ten promising, versatile European acting newcomers to the Berlin International Film Festival each year.

    Ana Vartolomei tells us about her memories from that Berlinale 2022 and how she enriched her experience as an actress while sharing it with colleagues from other countries.

    What does it mean to be an European actor? “it means being also nourished by other cultures, other societies, other forms of living and I feel all that makes us grow as humans and make us grow as actors too” declares Vartolomei.

    The post “Adam’s Sake”, interview with actress and Shooting Star 2022 Anamaria Vartolomei appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

    7 min
  • “Two Prosecutors”, interview with director Sergei Loznitsa

    Sergei Loznitsa is back in Cannes competition at the 78th edition of the festival with “Two prosecutors“.

    The film marks the director’s return to fiction, almost ten years after Donbass, presented in Un Certain Regard in Cannes.

    The Ucranian director was at the Festival de Cannes last year with “The invasion“, a documentary showing the everyday life, along two years, of civilians during the war.

    With “Two prosecutors” Loznitsa brings to big screen Georgy Demidov’s novella, about the authors’ experience in a gulag for 14 years.

    As it was written in 1969, the book was confiscated by the KGB in the 80’s and then only released in 2009. Loznitsa read it and started working on its adaptation to the big screen in 2020.

    The reason why the director decided it was the right time to bring this book to the screen is that the situation in Russia and other countries is getting worse and worse everyday.

    As he said to Variety: “Watching this story from the past, we also recognize the present”.

    The post “Two Prosecutors”, interview with director Sergei Loznitsa appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

    9 min
  • Matt Dillon, interview with the actor at the Riviera International Film Festival

    Matt Dillon, one of the protagonist of the last Riviera International Film Festival, says that film industry in some many ways has changes since he started his job, now also because of Artificial intelligence. “I think the human stories are important. I believe in good stay telling. AI scares us, but the machine doesn’t have intention”.

    In this interview he talks about his career and how art is important. “For me is important follow the heart and to be actively created”. Recently he shot a new movie, directed by Claire Denis, “The Fence“, in which he played a construction former in west Africa.

    The post Matt Dillon, interview with the actor at the Riviera International Film Festival appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

    10 min
  • Rufus Sewell, interview with the actor at the Riviera International Film Festival

    Rufus Sewell, jury president of the last edition of Riviera International Film Festival, talks to FredFilmRadio about his career and how is important to support new generations. “I see so many young independent filmmakers’ works in a row for this, just to be reminded how refreshing it is to see films that are being made as a kind of first burst of enthusiasm and heart and belief”.

    About his career, he says: “I think it’s stupid to have no regrets. I mean, however, you don’t know what would have happened if you’d made different choices. I do think that the worst parts of my career and my choices have ended up contributing to the best parts. So I’m very happy with where my career is now. So much of what I know about myself and what I bring to my work is made up from those experiences. Like with all of the bad things that happen to you in life, if you take them away, you would be a different person. I’m very excited about the journey that I’ve had that leads me to hear”. 

    Now as in the past Sewell chooses the projects “go on instincts. But it’s very different when you’re offered a wider variety or have access to a wider variety. My criteria is always the same”. He’s about to do a film called “Billion Dollar Spy“. “I shoot in Budapest after this festival. In a few days I start. That’s a spy kind of espionage thing about CIA in Moscow, late 1970s”.

    The post Rufus Sewell, interview with the actor at the Riviera International Film Festival appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

    6 min
  • “¿De qué casa eres?”, interview with director Ana Perez Quiroga

    In “De que casa eres“, Ana Perez Quiroga brings to light the little-known story of thousands of Basque children exiled to the Soviet Union before WWII, through the personal journey of Angelita Perez.

    Blending rare archival footage and emotional testimony, the film explores the lasting impact of war, exile, and the search for identity, highlighting both the wounds left behind and the strength to endure.

    Ana recounts her extensive research in Soviet and Spanish archives and reflects on the symbolic presence of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.

    The film is also a tender collaboration with her mother, whose memories anchor the narrative. Together, they explore generational trauma and the enduring power of storytelling.

     

    The post “¿De qué casa eres?”, interview with director Ana Perez Quiroga appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

    15 min

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