FRED Film Radio - English Channel

After closing the 38th edition of the Bolzano Film Festival – Bozen, “The Mariana Trench (Marianengraben) – La Fossa delle Marianne” by Eileen Byrne is coming out in Italian movie theaters, with Trent Film, from April 24th. 

The film is based on Jasmin Schreiber’s book and it tells the story of Paula (Luna Wedler), a young woman grieving the loss of her little brother, who meets on her path a widower, Helmut, who’s also dealing with loss. 

It all started, for Eileen Byrne, at the Books at Berlinale, an initiative of the film festival where a selection of books is presented to representatives of the audiovisual industry as they might be perfect for a film adaptation. 

Jasmin Schreiber’s book resonated with Byrne who decided to adapt it for her directorial debut. “Tragicomedies are my way of looking at life, Jasmin Schreiber’s book touched me” says Eileen Byrne. 

Key to the film are the two protagonists of the film, playing Paula and Helmet: Luna Wedler and Edgar Selge. 

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At the 40th Lovers Film Festival, FRED Film Radio interviewed actor James Duval where he presented the screening of “Totally F***ed Up”, a drama film written and directed by Gregg Araki considered a seminal entry in the New Queer Cinema genre.

Thirty years after the release of “Totally F***ed Up“, the film is still in the spotlight. “I think it speaks to our present because it’s so honest”, says James Duval. “I was 18 when I met Gred and made the movie. It changed my life. I think there’s a raw, naked honesty and emotion laid wide open and bare for everybody to see is what this film helped. I think people respond more now than they ever have to. At the time I was looking for direction. I was very young and impressionable, but I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know if I accepted myself. I was a bit suicidal. I didn’t know if I was going to make it to 21. And all of a sudden, I read Greg’s screenplay about kids my age feeling completely left out and outcast. And everything that was in that script made me feel less alone, a little bit more connected to a world that none of us felt connected to”.

The “Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy“ has become a cult classic in cinema. What kind of impact did it have on the actor? “That film was a catalyst of change for me as a person, on a personal and professional level. After I had finished making the series of films with Greg, I found it difficult to make movies because I wasn’t getting meaningful scripts”, remembers James Duval. “I wasn’t getting scripts that were challenging the status quo, and pushing things forward, and really getting into the internal core of what we felt and who we are. I will always have a special place in my heart for movies like Totally Fucked Up or The Doom Generation because of what they meant to me and how they changed me as a person. I don’t want to sound crazy. But after I had done Independence Day and Gone in 60 Seconds, I got a little freaked out by the business. Because the movies were fun, and they’re different. They weren’t meaningful in the same way. There was so much more money involved, and so many people were so connected on how they could use these movies to keep themselves relevant”.

There is a war on human rights in Europe and the United States. There is a real emergency that is putting the lives of millions of people at risk. “It’s quite shocking because I never thought we would be back here, to be honest. We’ve made great strides, but I think in other ways it’s worse than it’s ever been. It’s gone back to before I was born”, explains James Duval. “When you have students who are being silenced, who are being removed from the country because of things they say, because of what they feel, because of who they love: that’s a big problem. Maybe I’m lucky from my limited scope living in Los Angeles, which is a very liberal city, but I can say that the new generation is bigger than the baby boomers. The generation was so large that they could change the functioning of society. Everything that was happening in society could be changed because they were a large enough group to impact it. But the new generation is larger than the baby boomers. They’re doing it in a way that we were fighting for our whole lives, and it’s very natural to them. We have to continue to speak up, which goes back to something I learned when I met Greg during the AIDS epidemic. Silence is death, so don’t be silent”.

One of the unforgettable roles of James Duval‘s career is Frank in “Donnie Darko” by Richard Kelly. How has the actor seen the film grow over the years? “I signed on to the movie because Jason Schwartzman was playing Donnie Darko. But after I signed on, he fell out. And we got this really talented kid named Jake Gyllenhaal. And it just became a different movie”, remembers the actor. “My heart broke after we played at Sundance, and nobody wanted to pick the movie up. Christopher Nolan, who had done Memento at the time, is responsible for helping us get distribution. It came out in the theater three weeks later. We made no money. The movie disappeared. Two years later I was walking through a store and somebody just said: ‘Frank’. I turned to look and it was a security guard who just saw the movie. And what had happened slowly over time, I just started to hear more and more about the movie. And then a couple of years after that it became a huge hit on DVD. So to go from a complete failure to being more successful than I could imagine is a strange thing”.

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At the 40th Lovers Film Festival, FRED Film Radio interviewed directors Felipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon to talk about “Night Stage”, a film presented in competition.

“NightStage”‘s characters discover their fetish for sex in public places, risking everything. Is the choice to tell this story also linked tothe desire to portrait sex as something that should not be hidden? “I think that’s something very important. We always had films connected with this idea of desires, sexuality, eroticism”, explains Felipe Matzembacher.“Nowadays, I think we are entering an era in which people are becoming more prudish, more conservative. We wanted to make a film that put desire as a central force. Desire is the kind of force that can confront capitalism. Because sometimes the idea of being part of a major or mainstream society allows you since you repress your desires. That was something very important to us: the idea that you can fit in this more conservative, capitalist and neoliberal society if you hide your desires, if you suppress them. And then we create these characters that have this very strong force trying to combat this”.

Do the directors think that with their films they are helping to erase years of stereotypes of queer representation in cinema? “I think what is relevant for us when we are developing our characters is todo complex lives there”, says Marcio Reolon. “So we don’t think of our characters as absolute representatives ofone segment of society, but we always look at them as whole complex human beings. And I think this adds layers to these characters and therefore adds multiplicity, adds this possibility of different lives, of different existences, rather than like reducting them to one specific kind of existence or one kind of behavior”.

“NightStage” has a strong visual component. How did directors imagine it and what were their references? “This is something that crossed many personal lines of research that we do for a long time. When we were developing this story in the beginning we thought it was a noir”, says Felipe Matzembacher.“But then later we realized it’s like this next step of noir that would be like the erotic thrillers. And then we really dive into these films. But also it’s a reflection of our history as artists, because both Marcio and I were actors before becoming directors. So we put a lot of importance on how to stage the idea of performance and how to put them on screen”. “Stage is a very important word to look at this film, because as we’re talking a lot about performance, about these characters that perform specific public lives to hide their private lives”, explains Marcio Reolon. “They are actors and we wanted the film to have this performance even on its aesthetics. Even the lights are performative. For us, this was very relevant. We also got inspiration from New Hollywood cinema. And it was really fun to do a film. We felt so much freedom by doing it because we always wanted Night Stage to be playful”.

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At the 40th Lovers Film Festival, FRED Film Radio interviewed director Muneeb Hassan to talk about “All the Men I Met but Never Dated”, a short film presented at the International Short Film Competition.

“All the Men I Met but Never Dated” deals with balancing queer identity with one’s spiritual identity. Is that a process the director had to go through as well? “I think it’s just within yourself if you practice a religion. This is something between you and your God and if you separate that you’re good to go”, says Muneeb Hassan. “There are no problems within finding yourself, whoever you are. It’s just a matter of you and your God”.

The director lives in the United States. As a member of the queer community, is he concerned about the climate of hatred that the Trump administration has spread in the country? “We had Trump four years ago and for four years. People survived. I think people will still survive as long as there’s a resistance because if there’s then they will stop. That’s pretty much all”, says Muneeb Hassan. “It’s all about how you perceive it since we live in the major cities. It doesn’t really affect that much, but if you go on a federal level sometimes it does”.

There are many clichés that crowd queer cinema, losing the possibility of making films and TV series capable of showing believable characters and stories. “I think America is way behind in terms of putting up queer cinema because everything starts with sex and ends in the sex. There’s a third person in the relationship. I think it doesn’t connect with the majority of American audiences”, explains Muneeb Hassan. “The one film that I think that did change the stereotypes and the ideology of American people was Call Me By Your Name. A lot of people connected to it on a bigger level in America, as well with Brokeback Mountain and Moonlight. They were cinematic gems. But if you see other films you know they are just very extremely loud for no reason. And it just gives gags and laughs to a very small community but not on a larger scale which is kind of a problem. We have to create stories that would relate to the bigger audience”.

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At the 40th Lovers Film Festival, FRED Film Radio interviewed the director Matthew Fifer to talk about “Haze”, a film presented in competition.

How did the “Haze” project come about and how much of a personal aspect is there in the story it tells? “I moved back home for the pandemic and I rediscovered my town’s abandoned psychiatric center. In New York, I grew up down the street from a massive psychiatric center that had 9,000 patients at its peak. It had its own movie theater, its own water supply, its own grocery store. It was a village and it was run by the psych patients. When I moved there, it was just this cemetery. These abandoned buildings that couldn’t be taken down because of asbestos, which is a cancer-causing. And so I said: ‘Wow, this would be a great set for a film’”, says Matthew Fifer. “And at the same time, my mother said: ‘Do you know that the man who built our house also built the psych center?’. He would steal supplies to build our house, like bricks and windows and doors. And he was an alcoholic. He also took psych patients to the house, to build it. My whole house is like almost an extension of the psychiatric center”.

Was “Haze” inspired by other films visually or narratively? “We’re having a conversation with the Hays Code, the law from Hollywood back in the 30s. And it said you cannot have queer people in your film unless they’re villains or they get murdered. You can’t have profanity. You can’t have nudity. And so all of these films like Psycho, Dressed to Kill, Silence of the Lambs have the Hays Code woven into the fabric of the story and the visual language, either intentionally or unintentionally”, says Matthew Fifer. “The movie is having a conversation with those films. And one of the last sequences is inspired by Silence of the Lambs”.

The queer community in cinema has often been represented in a way that is disconnected from reality and full of clichés. But something has changed. “I think we’ve come such a long way in the last five to ten years. Weekend was like the first film I remember seeing in the theater that was gay. And I was like ok walking into the theater and walking out and hiding myself”, remember Matthew Fifer. “And that one was so beautiful because it was kind of about the scarcity of queer love and how even if you find it for a moment, it’s beautiful, it’s everything. It’s what we all experience coming from the suburbs or rural parts. And when we finally get it, even for a moment, we’re like: ‘Oh my God, I have it’. And then it’s gone”.

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At the 40th Lovers Film Festival, FRED Film Radio interviewed the director Liam Calvert to talk about “A Night Like This”, a film presented in competition.

In “A Night Like This” London plays a central role. It is like a co-protagonist. But although it is a city full of life and opportunities, it can also make those who live there feel lonely. “I moved to London a few years ago and upon moving there I learned the rules of the ciry where you don’t talk to people on the underground, you keep your eyes down, walk fast, don’t talk to people you don’t know. And I think even though there’s so many people around you it can make you feel more lonely and more isolating in some ways especially with things like social media where people are posting the fabulous times they’re having. If you don’t have that it can be quite a struggle”, says Liam Calvert.

The film avoids labels. In a historical moment in which there is a certain obsession with self-definition, how Liam Calvert hope this aspect will be received? “I think it is a tough dilemma because in some ways labels can be helpful in terms of finding other people like you, especially in the queer community, but also they can be quite limiting in a way they can almost be fences. You think: ‘Oh that person’s not like me so I can’t possibly have anything to do with them’”, says the director. “I think sometimes to have those to break those boundaries and to ignore those limits is really helpful and see each other as just as people. I think as well there’s an idea that fascinates me where the idea that every person you know knows a different version of you so the person your partner knows is different to the person your parent knows is different to the person your colleagues know. I think not all the labels will apply to all those people so it’s very good to just peel that back and peel all the layers back especially as we go through the film as well to see their different layers and they’re not the people you thought they were at the start. Those labels could have been irrelevant by the end”.

For a long time, the LGBTQIA+ community has been stereotyped in cinematic representation. How Liam Calvert think queer representation has changed in cinema? “I think representation has grown and it’s tough to say positive or negative but I think the best thing to do for representation is just to see as many different sides of it as you can because there’s no one way of being gay there’s no one way of being queer there’s so many different facets to it and no two people really live the same experience so I think what you really need is to show as much breadth of representation as possible so that’s why TV has helped show more long-form stories”, says the director. “I think it definitely used to be a lot more sad narratives a lot of coming outs that go badly a lot of more age stories and while those stories are still important and they still need to be told there’s much more around that can be shown”.

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At the 40th Lovers Film Festival, FRED Film Radio interviewed actor Alan Cumming who has been awarded the “Stella della Mole” prize. An award given to personalities who have left an indelible mark on the world of cinema and beyond.

There is a very high price to pay in terms of acceptance by others in deciding to be yourself to the fullest. Do you think it is only by having power over your own body that you can be truly free, despite everything and everyone? “I just don’t understand the obsession with people’s bodies,” says Alan Cumming. “Especially in America, I just don’t understand why they’re so obsessed with trans people’s bodies, women. As a Scottish person, I really believe in the act of self-determination. That you should decide what you do with who you are. I think Scotland should be able to self-determine as a country. I think women should be able to self-determine about their own bodies, governments, and especially usually white men should not be able to dictate to women what they can do. It’s terrible what’s happening right now in America that if you’re in a state where abortion is banned, if you leave that state to go to have an abortion elsewhere, you can be charged. And I think also trans people should be allowed to self-determine about their own bodies.”

There is the legitimization in politics of a violent and anti-inclusion language. Trump is an example but is not the only one. If those who govern us are the first that exclude the other, what kind of society can we build? “I really believe it’s about fear of the other and of the unknown”, says Alan Cumming. “And I think that right now, I feel we’re suffering a worldwide backlash because in the last decade or so, there have been great strides, especially in terms of trans people and non-binary people, and those concepts being more understood in the mainstream, that people understand. Like my old Scottish lady mom. I have some trans friends and she absolutely gets what is going on and she accepts that and is not afraid of it. But I think most people either don’t know about it or are angry in some way about it because it upsets the way we’ve been used to. And I think a lot of the anger against women, against trans people, against people of color as well, is all to do with the fact that we are going through a huge seismic shift in the world and we have much better communication so people are able to understand things about other people. We are changing in terms of the demographic, in terms of color and gender, and it’s just very scary for people. And I think mostly the people who are in power, and sadly right now it seems across the world they tend to be more right-wing, white, older men mostly, they are determined to stop this and it’s impossible to stop it. It’s like they’re playing the violin as the Titanic goes down. It’s not going to be stopped”.

Alan Cumming is returning to play Nightcrawler in “Avengers: Doomsday“. How important does he think it is to be a part of a film like this to reach a wider audience and represent queerness? “I’m very excited to go back and play this character”, says the actor. “I think actually the X-Men and comic books in general are very queer. The whole idea that they have to hide things about themselves and they’re apart from society and they’re kind of ostracized, it’s a very queer analogy. It’s great to sort of have a platform to talk about things but I think in a way, the X-Men and those characters themselves are pretty queer anyway and I love the fact that comic book culture is very queer friendly. It seems like a sort of little straight boy thing but actually it’s very queer friendly. I’m just excited to go back to something and have a better experience of doing it than I did the last time. I’m not one to hold back with my opinions and I’m very conscious of the fact that I have a platform and I want to make sure that people understand what it’s like to be queer and especially in America or places where people are being persecuted. That’s really important to me”.

What is the film, concert o tv show thanks to which What is the film thanks to which Alan Cumming felt represented for the first time on the screen? “I remember being little and seeing Elton John perform and thinking: ‘Oh’. But of course, he was closeted at the time. I was really perceptive, obviously. But I saw in him the kind of the sort of theatricality and the camp and his and it’s in a performative way. He was very comfortable with his sexuality. But of course, in real life, he wasn’t then. But I saw through it. ‘Of course, I am a superhero’”.

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With the blessing of its italian distribution company, Wanted, the complete trilogy by Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud composed by “Sex” (2024), “Love” (2024) and “Dreams” (2025) will be presented at the Bolzano Film Festival before landing in Italian cinemas. 

The Golden Bear winning film Dreams has already been released in italian Cinemas while Sex, presented in Berlinale 2024, will be out on May 15th and Love, which premiered in the Venice Competition, on April 17th. 

Vincenzo Bugno, director of the 38th Bolzano Film Festival declares about the trilogy: “Three films that speak of relationships, of sexuality, of dreams and desires, portraying the worlds of people of different ages. But there is something rare, something special in these three films, something that does not leave us indifferent, that draws us in, that carries us into the experiences of the characters and makes us feel as if we are part of them—almost as if there were no longer any difference between the stories shown on screen and our own lives. What is this special quality? Why do we feel so deeply connected to the characters and what they’re going through? I believe it’s empathy. Dag Johan Haugerud is a master of contemporary cinema and a master of empathy—able to convey it, to make it reach the audience.”

We finally talk to Dag Johan Haugerud about his complete trilogy and about his cinema and his references. 

Haugerud’s trilogy “is about what identity means” says the director who’s currently busy finishing up his new novel and thinking about his next film. 

The post “The Sex, Love, Dreams Trilogy”, interview with director Dag Johan Haugerud , special guest at the 38° BFFB appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

After world premiering in the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2025 – Tiger Competition, debut feature by actor and filmmaker Stefan Djordjević, “Wind, Talk to me“, lands in the 38° Bolzano Film Festival Bozen’s competition. 

While blending harmoniously fiction and documentary, the film is Djordjević’s cinematic way of dealing with the loss of his mother. 

Reuniting with his family to celebrate his grandmother’s birthday, the director, who also plays the lead, explores the different nuances of grieving while reflecting on his mother’s thoughts, beliefs, recommendations, dreams. 

Djordjević adds some footage of a dialogue he had with his mom in the final stages of her long illness while they discuss about the wind being able to talk to people (if you really listen). 

This way, his mother’s presence pervades the whole film as she’s there with her family all the time. 

As it deals with loss, with connecting to nature and with learning to listen to our inner self, the film feels both very personal and very universal.

The post “Wind, talk to me”, interview with director Stefan Djordjević appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

German director Christian Petzold was awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 38° Bolzano Film Festival – Bozen. 

The festival directed by Vincenzo Bugno also showcased three very significant films in Petzold’s long career: Barbara, Transit and the recent Silver Bear winner Afire ( 2023). 

Petzold just finished shooting his new film “Mirror n. 3” with actress and muse Paula Beer. The film wasn’t supposed to be the third and final one of the Elements trilogy ( including Undine and Afire) but, as the director realized that the wind made an important part of the film, “Mirror n. 3” now officially marks the conclusion of this project. 

After a very warm and affectionate award ceremony on April 8th, Petzold has also participated in a special q&a for his 2013 hit “Barbara“, starring Nina Hoss. 

The director shares his memories of that particular moment of his career and the work he and his team did on the film while remarking on how actual and contemporary the film feels right now. 

In a conversation about the future of European Cinema and how it can really make the difference into the cinema industry, Petzold states: “The division between mainstream movies and Festival movies is not doing any good to European Cinema. Movies like Anora belong to both categories and the future is to make movies we can see in Festivals and in Cinemas”.

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