FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Erik Poppe, director of the film Utøya 22. Juli.

Erik Poppe unveils a few of the many thoughts and dilemmas he has had through the making of Utøya 22. Juli, his latest feature that makes the audience relive the terror perpetrated by Anders Breivik 7 years ago. In competition at 2018’s Berlinale, Utøya 22. Juli will surely divide the critics and the public, but with the hope of becoming a vessel for remembrance and self-analysis for today’s society.

Utøya 22. Juli:  On 22 July 2011 five hundred young people attending a summer camp on the island of Utøya were attacked by a heavily armed right-wing extremist. The murderous attack claimed the lives of 69 victims. It was a trauma that rocked Norway to the core, and still does to this day. Director Erik Poppe has dared to attempt to turn the events of that summer into a film. His drama opens with documentary footage of Oslo where, shortly beforehand, the same attacker had exploded a car bomb killing eight people; the scene then shifts to the island. The camera follows 19-year-old Kaja who is spending a few days of the holiday here with her young sister Emilie. The two are quarrelling because Emilie is in no mood for the camp and has absolutely no desire to go to the barbecue. And so Kaja ends up going alone. Suddenly, the first gunshot is heard. This first shot marks the beginning of a breathless 72-minute-long reconstruction of events, filmed in a single take, as seen through the eyes of the victims. Kaja’s desperate search for Emilie. The fear in the eyes of the young people. Their escape into the forest. Their desperate hope of rescue. And the unknown assassin, getting closer and closer.

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PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews actor Willem Dafoe at the 68th Berlinale.

He has attended Berlinale and visited Berlin so many times but Willem Dafoe’s presence at the 68th Berlinale was special and unique. He’s the recipient of this year’s Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement that was handed to him by Wim Wenders and Berlinale Artistic Director Dieter Kosslick. In a conversation after the ceremony, Dafoe tells FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti that he feels often overwhelmed by compliments so that it is actually easier for him to stand the critics. Oliver Stone told the Hollywood Reporter that Willem Dafoe’s secret for a long and gorgeous career was that he never wanted to be a movie star but he stayed an actor. Dafoe elaborates on Stone’s comment revealing a simple secret on how to stay true to his acting “mission”. As we’re in the Awards season and Willem Dafoe is nominated for Best Supporting Actor in Sean Baker’s Florida Project, we discuss the Oscar’s vote mechanism and the difficulty of comparing two totally different actor performances. Willem Dafoe has been married to director Giada Colagrande for more than 10 years and while talking about the MeToo Movement and all its good and bad reflections and consequences in the film business, he reveals how he saw the struggles his wife had to face in order to have access to the same financing and possibilities as her male colleagues to direct a film.

Willem Dafoe:  The 68th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival is dedicating this year’s Homage to American film and theatre actor Willem Dafoe and presenting him with an Honorary Golden Bear in recognition of his life’s work. To accompany the awarding of the Honorary Golden Bear, a screening of Daniel Nettheim’s film The Hunter (Australia 2011) will take place following the official presentation at Berlinale Palast on Tuesday, February 20, 2018. The film programme for the Homage is curated by Deutsche Kinemathek. Willem Dafoe has participated in more than 100 film productions, enriching them with his expressive performances and formidable presence. His enormous technical range as an actor extends all the way from the personification of the unfathomably evil to the portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth. In addition to his celebrated cinematic appearances, Dafoe has also pursued a parallel career in theatre, his other passion. “Willem Dafoe is a close friend of the festival and has often been a guest at the Berlinale in the past in the scope of film screenings and even as a member of the International Jury in 2007,” comments Festival Director Dieter Kosslick. “I am really looking forward now to welcoming him to the 2018 edition of the festival as a guest of honour and recognising his lifetime achievement with the Honorary Golden Bear.” Willem Dafoe began studying theatre formally at the age of 17. In 1977, he was one of the founding members of the renowned New York theatre ensemble “The Wooster Group”, where he remained a member for several decades. In addition to his activities on stage, Dafoe increasingly began to turn his attention to film work starting in the early 1980s. He first gained exposure through his appearance in Kathryn Bigelow’s debut film The Loveless (1981) and in Streets of Fire (1984) by Walter Hill. In William Friedkin’s police thriller To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) he played ruthless counterfeiter Eric “Ric” Masters, a villain who will stop at nothing in order to neutralise his adversaries. In 1986, Dafoe’s portrayal of Sergeant Elias Grodin in Oliver Stone’s anti-war drama Platoon would expose him to a wider audience. He received his first Academy Award nomination for his performance in the break-through film. Two years later, Martin Scorsese successfully recruited him to fill the leading role as Jesus Christ in his hotly debated literary adaptation The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Still in the same year, Dafoe co-starred alongside Gene Hackman in director Alan Parker’s civil-rights-era drama Mississippi Burning (1988). In the film, Dafoe plays a young FBI agent fighting against racism and the Ku Klux Klan. Many multifaceted roles would follow, in films such as Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Wim Wenders’ In weiter Ferne, so nah! (Faraway, So Close! 1993) and The English Patient (1996). In the year 2000, Dafoe shined as Max Schreck in the horror film Shadow of the Vampire by director E. Elias Merhige. His brilliant turn as a member of the undead earned him his second Academy Award nomination. In 2002 Dafoe appeared under the direction of Paul Schrader in the biopic Auto Focus. In 2004 Dafoe collaborated with director Wes Anderson on the latter’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Parallel to these appearances, he slipped into the role of Norman Osborn, aka the villainous “Green Goblin”, three times for the Spider-Man movie franchise (in 2002, 2004 and 2007). In 2009 Danish director Lars von Trier cast him as the male lead alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg in his psycho-thriller Antichrist — the film became the subject of controversy due to scenes featuring graphic sex and violence. In 2011 Dafoe put on an extraordinary acting performance once again as a lonely hunter in Daniel Nettheim’s thriller The Hunter. Three years later, in Abel Ferrara’s biopic Pasolini Dafoe portrayed the Italian filmmaker in the final period of his life, shortly before his murder. On stage he has worked with Richard Foreman in Idiot Savant at The Public Theatre and two international productions with Robert Wilson: The Old Woman opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov and The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic. For the latter project, Italian actor and director Giada Colagrande followed the rehearsals with her camera, capturing footage that would later form the basis for a documentary film (2012). Willem Dafoe most recently performed a new theatre piece, The Minister’s Black Veil, based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story and directed by Romeo Castellucci. Last year Dafoe appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s feature Murder on the Orient Express (2017). The German-American joint effort The Sleeping Shepherd (directed by Frank Hudec) is currently in pre-production. He has also finished filming under the direction of Julian Schnabel for At Eternity’s Gate, in which he plays Vincent van Gogh. From March 2018 onwards, German cinema audiences will be able to see Willem Dafoe in the much feted feature The Florida Project (directed by Sean Baker). Dafoe’s role in The Florida Project earned him both a nomination for the British BAFTA Awards and recently his third nomination for an Academy Award, in the category of Best Supporting Actor.

To know more about this Award, click here.

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PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Alvaro Delgado-Aparicio, director of the film Retablo.

Alvaro Delgado-Aparicio directs a wonderful film about family love and respect, and desires. In astounding surroundings we discover also what a Retablo is and which importance it has in the Peruvian culture. It is amazing to know the building of the acting process with the kid playing the lead role, and the process of choosing him among 650 other kids….

Retablo:  ‘Are you not happy working with him?’ · ‘I want to see other things. You will get lost out there.’ · ‘Why can the others go and I can’t?’ · ‘Because you are an artisan not a peasant.’ Segundo sees silence as his only option for dealing with his father Noé’s secret. The 14-year-old lives with his parents in a village high up in the mountains of Peru. Noé is a respected artisan and Segundo’s role model. With loving eye for detail, he artfully crafts altarpieces for church and homes, and is preparing his son to follow in his footsteps. But cracks form in their tight bond. The film takes an unflinching look behind the facades of a seemingly intact village community, in which patriarchal rules are imposed with unrelenting violence. In saturated colours, a panorama view of a world in which a young artist is finding his place.

The post Alvaro Delgado-Aparicio – Retablo #Berlinale2018 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Felipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon, directors of the film Tinta Bruta (Hard Paint).

Felipe and Marcio are friends, colleagues and a team that provides the cinema world with small and important films, such as this one. It is a pleasure to chat with them and learning how they work, they create and continue their artistic rising.

Tinta Bruta (Hard Paint):  Pedro earns a living in chat rooms. The image resolution may not be perfect but when Pedro transforms himself into NeonBoy in front of the webcam he still manages to create the desired impression. Slowly, this young man dips his fingers into pots of coloured paint and glides them across his naked body. Glowing in the dark, NeonBoy follows his users’ commands until he agrees to meet one of them in a private chat room for money. But things change when Pedro’s sister Luiza moves out of their shared apartment and he notices that somebody is imitating his performances. He agrees to go on a date with his mysterious rival. This rendezvous will have far-reaching consequences. As with all of the previous films by directing duo Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon, we find ourselves again in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil, where we encounter young queers in search of intimacy, community and security. The elegantly interwoven virtual images and protagonists’ stories may take us away from the real world, yet in actuality we remain in an increasingly homophobic Brazilian society to whose misfits this sensitive, affectionate portrait in three acts is dedicated.

The post Felipe Matzembacher, Marcio Reolon – Tinta Bruta (Hard Paint) #Berlinale2018 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Claudia Priscilla and Kiko Goifman, directors of the documentary Bixa Travesty.

Claudia Priscilla and Kiko Goifman directed Bixa Travesty together, where the main character Linn da Quebrada reveals herself. It was a complex editing achievement. There is so much material left to make another two films, Kiko says…

Bixa Travesty:  Linn da Quebrada is a black transwoman from impoverished periurban São Paulo; she is also a pop performer who raises her voice for queers of colour from the favelas. Accompanied by her childhood friend and partner in crime, black transwoman and singer Jup do Bairro, her concerts are nothing short of dazzling. Aided by exorbitant costumes and plenty of twerking, her performances are onslaughts of electro against Brazil’s white heteronormative gender order and the machismo of the country’s funk scene. Private moments reveal her gentler side: as she showers with friends or cooks with her mother the talk turns to love, racism and poverty. Archive footage in the shape of home videos shows her in intimate performances at a hospital during her own cancer treatment. We begin to realise that Linn uses radical nudity as a means to undermine accepted gender roles. This documentary also shows her in dramatised radio interviews in which she powerfully espouses her convictions about feminism and her transsexuality: not for Linn the role of a cis woman; she’d rather be a woman with a penis whose gender identity is not bound by her genitalia but is in a permanent state of flux.

The post Claudia Priscilla, Kiko Goifman – Bixa Travesty #Berlinale2018 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Aleksey German Jr., director of the film Dovlatov.

Aleksey German Jr. is here in Berlin with his extremely ambitious film Dovlatov,  screening in the official competition of the 68th edition of the Berlinale. After his visually stunning Under the Electric Clouds that won him the Silver Bear in 2015, German returns with a film that pars his beautiful aesthetics with a fluid and bold narrative. Through the fog of 1970s Soviet Union, we experience the struggle of Sergei Dovlatov, who would then become, unbeknownst to him, one of the most influential writers in post-Soviet Russia.

Dovlatov:  Leningrad, November 1971. The city is shrouded in fog. Another anniversary of the revolution is being celebrated, but the country is not making any progress – politically, economically or culturally. Sergei has first-hand experience of this stasis. The young writer’s manuscripts are regularly rejected by the official media; his view on things and people is not desired. Others are experiencing similar problems, one of them is his friend Joseph Brodsky whom the state forces into exile. Sergei is however determined to stay and lead a normal life with his wife Lena and daughter Katya. He wants to write about discovering reality: about shipyard workers, or the construction of the metro where one day the bodies of thirty children killed during the Second World War are uncovered. Alexey German Jr’s film makes use of grand tableaux and extended tracking shots to portray the world of Russian-Jewish writer Sergei Dovlatov (1941–1990), whose brilliantly ironic texts were forbidden from being printed in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev. Out of a tragicomic rondeau of rebellion and assimilation, pain and fatigue, ensues a portrait of an era of stagnation and its destructive effects.

The post Aleksey German Jr. – Dovlatov #Berlinale2018 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Freddie Fox, Jim Broadbent and Moe Dunford, actors of the film Black 47.

The meeting with the stellar cast of Black 47 continues, and this time we get to sit and talk with the bad guys. Jim Broadbent, Moe Dunford and Freddie Fox are indeed the different facets of the malign indifference and pain that the British Empire perpetrated towards the Irish People during the Famine. However, this time around a certain Feeney will demand justice, his own way.

Black 47:  Ireland, 1847. After fighting for the British crown in the war in Afghanistan, Martin Feeney returns to his Irish homeland as a deserter. He finds his country in dire straits. Potato blight has destroyed the crops and over a million people have perished in the resulting famine. Martin’s family has also been affected: his mother is among the victims and his brother has been sentenced to death by the British occupying forces. Martin’s plan to emigrate to the USA with his sister-in-law and her children fails, and witnessing his last remaining relatives wasting away almost robs him of the will to live. In desperation, he begins a bloody vendetta across the social and political hierarchy of Ireland. To stop this wrathful avenger, the British hire Hannah who fought with Martin in Afghanistan. Lance Daly draws on motifs from the western for his drama about a dark chapter of British colonialism in neighbouring Ireland that has rarely been told on the big screen. The gritty realism of the film’s photography conveys the misery of a suffering people and describes individuals cast adrift in austere landscapes.

To discover more about the film, click here.

The post Freddie Fox, Jim Broadbent, Moe Dunford – Black 47 #Berlinale2018 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Linn da Quebrada, actress of the documentary Bixa Travesty.

Linn da Quebrada is a force of nature, a straight talking, charismatic persona with solid ideas about what she is, what she wants to be and the freedom she wants and asks for in order to be herself. In the film about her life and her work she opens up, she reveals and explains the evolution of her personal and artistic world.

Bixa Travesty:  Linn da Quebrada is a black transwoman from impoverished periurban São Paulo; she is also a pop performer who raises her voice for queers of colour from the favelas. Accompanied by her childhood friend and partner in crime, black transwoman and singer Jup do Bairro, her concerts are nothing short of dazzling. Aided by exorbitant costumes and plenty of twerking, her performances are onslaughts of electro against Brazil’s white heteronormative gender order and the machismo of the country’s funk scene. Private moments reveal her gentler side: as she showers with friends or cooks with her mother the talk turns to love, racism and poverty. Archive footage in the shape of home videos shows her in intimate performances at a hospital during her own cancer treatment. We begin to realise that Linn uses radical nudity as a means to undermine accepted gender roles. This documentary also shows her in dramatised radio interviews in which she powerfully espouses her convictions about feminism and her transsexuality: not for Linn the role of a cis woman; she’d rather be a woman with a penis whose gender identity is not bound by her genitalia but is in a permanent state of flux.

The post Linn da Quebrada – Bixa Travesty #Berlinale2018 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Andreas Struck, director of Panorama section at 68th Berlinale.

Andreas Struck talks with us about his new position as director of Panorama, and about sharing his position with Paz Lazaro and Michael Stutz. How can a triad of directors work? How do they choose the films? And what new input can they bring to consolidate tradition that Panorama holds?

Panorama section:  Artistic vision, the courage to be different, a desire for the unfamiliar, a profound historical awareness or pioneering personalities: the objective of the Panorama is to seek out from across the world new impulses in the prevailing trends and in cinematic creation and to present these in the spectrum of the programme. New works by renowned directors, debut films and discoveries celebrate their world or European premieres in the Panorama and invite to engage with them on a critical level as well as enjoying the cinematic experience. The Panorama challenges its audience and has the confidence to explore new avenues. Press Conferences and public discussions enable the press and audiences to enter into a dialogue about the films with their directors, producers and actors. At the same time, the film selection does not shy away from the current market, aiming both to sound it out and to bring it new impulses.

To discover more about the Festival, click here.

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PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Stephen Rea and James Frecheville, actors of the film Black 47.

Stephen Rea and James Frecheville join us for a chat regarding their latest work with director Lance Daly, here in competition at the Berlinale with his latest feature Black 47. We had to wait 150 years to have the first film to thoroughly tackle the despicable injustice perpetrated by the British Empire between 1845 and 1852, which caused at least one million people to die of starvation, and triggered the mass exodus of the Irish people to North America. To this day, Ireland has a population that is inferior to what it was at the beginning of the 19th century. In 2018, we can claim a bit of justice through the vengeful throttle Martin Feeney, granitically played by James Frecheville.

Black 47:  Ireland, 1847. After fighting for the British crown in the war in Afghanistan, Martin Feeney returns to his Irish homeland as a deserter. He finds his country in dire straits. Potato blight has destroyed the crops and over a million people have perished in the resulting famine. Martin’s family has also been affected: his mother is among the victims and his brother has been sentenced to death by the British occupying forces. Martin’s plan to emigrate to the USA with his sister-in-law and her children fails, and witnessing his last remaining relatives wasting away almost robs him of the will to live. In desperation, he begins a bloody vendetta across the social and political hierarchy of Ireland. To stop this wrathful avenger, the British hire Hannah who fought with Martin in Afghanistan. Lance Daly draws on motifs from the western for his drama about a dark chapter of British colonialism in neighbouring Ireland that has rarely been told on the big screen. The gritty realism of the film’s photography conveys the misery of a suffering people and describes individuals cast adrift in austere landscapes.

To discover more about the film, click here.

The post Stephen Rea, James Frecheville – Black 47 #Berlinale2018 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.