FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Simon Wilmont, director of the film The Distant Barking of Dogs.

Director Simon Wilmont presente his documentary feature, The Distant Barking of Dogs, at the 30th Internatioal Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). The film talks about ten-year-old Oleg, living in the Donetsk region of Eastern Ukraine: a warzone. Wilmont was inspired to tell this story after making two shorts about children from more relatively safe worlds, and wondering about places in which children live with danger all the time. As he says in this interview, he wondered: “how does a child who lives in a very dangerous environment find some kind of peace.” He was drawn to Oleg because he was really taken by the way he was “so good at putting words to his feelings.” The film also has a lot of love, and in trying to understand how he was able to achieve such an intimate portrait, we find out that the project could have been jeopardised by a curious rumour about them – “the foreigners” coming into the village. The Distant Barking of Dogs also looks at war in a very compelling way, and the impact it may have on a child: “at this age, you have some kind of inkling that the world I’m living in is dangerous and that something bad can happen. But at this age, it is also characteristic to not linger on such things because there are so many things that capture your imagination.” Finally, we also talk about Oleg’s grandmother, who is also a protagonist in the film, and the reason why she refuses to leave the region, among other things.

The Distant Barking of Dogs:  Ten-year-old Oleg lives in the Donetsk region of Eastern Ukraine – a warzone that often echoes with anti-aircraft fire and missile strikes. Sometimes these sounds are in the distance, while other times they’re frighteningly close. At school, Oleg learns about the bomb shelter and what to do when encountering a landmine. While many have left this dangerous area, Oleg remains with his grandmother, who has taken care of him since the death of his mother. This observational film follows a year in the life of Oleg and emphasizes the warm bond he has with his grandmother. He also has a close friendship with his cousin Yarik, who’s more disturbed by all the sudden noises – or perhaps he’s not as good as Oleg at hiding his fear. Meanwhile, the boys also find the war exciting, especially when a neighbor teaches them how to use a gun. By sticking close to Oleg, The Distant Barking of Dogs shows the effect of conflict on children.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Mikala Krogh, director of the film A Year of Hope.

Director Mikala Krogh presented her latest feature documentary, A Year of Hope, at the 30th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). The film talks about a group of street boys from Manila, in the Philippines, who are sent to a rehabilitation centre for a year, on an island very different from Manila, where they get the attention and care they don’t otherwise get. These street boys are drug addicted, or were subjected to serious trauma. They are only allowed to stay at the centre for a year, and once the year is out, they will hopefully not return to the streets, but head for a better life. In order to make A Year of Hope, Krogh moved to the Philippines for a year with her family – her husband even ended up being the football coach at the centre; as for her kids, “my childen [are] from Denmark,” so it was good for them to see “another part of life, of reality.” Krogh tells us about the current situation in the Philippines and why centres, such as that she films, are needed. “There are more than one million street kids in the Philippines,” she says. As for the work of the centre, she concludes that you can’t help every child, and while the overall tone of the film is optimistic, “not all stories have a happy end.” In this interview we ask her about how she established a level of trust with the young protagonists of her film, and how she ultimately came to choose the two that she mainly follows in A Year of Hope. She also talks about how the children did not have a problem being filmed, about trying to find a balance between “filming and not filming,” about what the centre does for the kids that are not able to be taken back in by their families, and more.

A Year of Hope:  You won’t want to watch this story about life on the streets of Manila, but you should. It’s shocking to hear young Tracy and Joshua talk about being drugged and sexually abused, about how they have to steal their clothes from clotheslines. Alternatively, we also see them surrounded by love, food and nurturing during their year with the Stairway Foundation in the rural Philippines. While there, they learn that their genitals are theirs and theirs alone. Meanwhile, we see police cadets being taught in the same open way about penises and vaginas. These future officers are obviously more uncomfortable about these discussions than the street children they will someday work to protect. As the children’s conversations are cut with grainy shots of the streets of Manila, the contrast is obvious between the dark city and the sunny coast where children can be children again. But life on the street is always lurking in the background.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Finlay Pretsell, director of the film Time Trial.

Director Finlay Pretsell presented his feature documentary, Time Trial, at the 30th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). The film talks about Scottish cyclist David Millar during his last cycling season. Millar was a racing champion who was caught for doping and then returned, becoming a huge advocate against doping. Pretsell tells us that he is a fan of cycling and of Millar, and that the film took some time to make “because it was quite a big production.” He also tells us that it was a difficult film to figure out how to shoot, and that it was hard to figure out a way out of not keeping the camera rolling: “we could never work out a way to do it any differently because there’s only one chance in a race of capturing these moments.” Making the film about just one person was also part of the risk. He tells us whether he ever felt like he was in the way of Millar’s preparation. “I do kind of feel like we were slightly in the way,” he says. “But they were also keen for a distraction, and we were a distraction.” Part of the power of the documentary comes from Pretell’s attention to detail and interest in the small moments, which contribute to a sensorial experience that takes the viewer right in the midst of the action. For instance, on television, you never hear what the cyclists say to each other, the mundane conversations that they have as they race. But Time Trial is also about the pain and frustration, the struggle of having to race and be on a bike for such a long time. In this interview, the director also talks about his interest in the human aspect of the story, his interest in blending documentary and fiction together, and what Millar thought of the film when he watched it.

Time Trial:  This portrait follows the former British road racing cyclist David Millar during his last cycling season. Director Finlay Pretsell has Millar tell his own story, and allows us to feel the impact the sport has on the cyclist. Immersed in the cyclist’s experience through the camera on Millar’s handlebars, we see his sweat and breathe with him in his race against the clock—he’s not getting any younger, and he wants to secure his spot in the Tour de France one last time. Simply by filming the cyclists, sometimes in slow motion, sometimes blurred and shaky, Pretsell makes us feel as if we too are slogging through the rain. We experience the euphoria of the race, but also the tedium. Music evocative of the piercing, repetitive rattle of a bicycle chain captures the endlessness of the route. The swelling, hypnotic sounds underlying the slow-motion footage make the peloton seem like a heard of hunted animals driven ever onwards. Time Trial shows just how far a man will go in his will to win.

The post Finlay Pretsell – Time Trial #IDFA2017 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Samantha Sartori interviews Mitra Tabrizian and Cyrus Massoudi, director and screenwriter of the film Gholam, at Gold Coast International Film Festival, Long Island, New York.

We spoke with Mitra Tabrizian and Cyrus Massoudi. The film brings together two of the most prominent Iranian actors from before and after the 1979 revolution, Behrouz Behnejad and Shahab Hosseini, the recipient of the grand jury prize for Best Actor at Cannes, 2016. Inspired by a real character, an enigmatic Iranian exile featured in Mitra’s 2006 Award winning photographic series Border, on Iranians in exile, Gholam is the story of one man’s search for a sense of purpose in the alien environment – a man with no expectations who has been through a revolution, a war and a change of landscape. Gholam will open in UK early 2018.

Gholam:  Set in London in 2011, Gholam is the story of an enigmatic Iranian cab driver, who works at night and doesn’t like to talk about his past. He has two jobs, yet seems not to be interested in the money. He eats at his uncle’s café every day, yet is fully aware of being betrayed by him. He agrees to the arrangement his mother makes for his return home, yet has no intention of going back. We learn that he was once a war hero, and yet disappeared from the battlefield without a trace. A man with no past, no future, no conviction, he still gets involved in the conflict of a total stranger and carries it through to the very end.

For more information on the film, click here.

The post Mitra Tabrizian, Cyrus Massoudi – Gholam #GCIFF2017 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Håvard Bustnes, director of the film Golden Dawn Girls.

Director Håvard Bustnes presented his feature documentary, Golden Dawn Girls, at the 30th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Golden Dawn is the name of an extrme nationalist party in Greece, and the film focuses on the women of the party, who had to take charge when the male leaders were arrested in 2013. Yet, the filming was not without his difficulty; although Bustnes had access, he found that in the interviews he wasn’t getting many straight answers and that the protagonists of his film were being quite protective: “they try to pretend that they are a serious political party, so it was difficult to get underneath that.” This is also why he decided to use clips in the film and also why he decided to include himself in the film. Despite this, Bustnes insists that he “tried to understand their worldview, that are so different from my worldview. In a way, you could say that we put up the rope, and they hang themselves.” In this interview, he talks about the challenges of making Golden Dawn Girls, and also proposes his opinion on why the popularity of Golden Dawn rose in Greece in 2012, and what should be done to stop this. We also talk about the fact that since then, extreme nationalist parties have been gaining momentum in many other countries outside of Greece as well. As far as his filmmaking interests are concerned, he also tells us that while Golden Dawn Girls is a politically themed documentary, he was more interested in the human aspect of the story: “I am mostly interested in the women and where they are at,” he says, as he tells us that the extreme nationalist women in his documentary turned out to be quite different from what he thought they would be when he first started the project.

Golden Dawn Girls: “Whatever has happened to Greece?” wonders filmmaker Håvard Bustnes out loud at the start of this disturbing documentary. In recent years, its image as a country of sunny beaches and friendly people has been overshadowed by political ideologies that are terrifyingly close to Nazism. With many prominent members of the far-right Golden Dawn party now behind bars, a daughter, a wife and a mother continue to propagate its message—and all three of them are seasoned enough to avoid any slips of the tongue during interviews. But while they regularly stop the interview to make sure it went as they want, Bustnes just leaves the camera running. The resulting material, supplemented with archive footage that leaves no room for doubt about the depraved side of this political party, reveals an ever-widening gulf between clear facts and political image-making. While it’s frustrating that the women are so unbending in their views, it does illustrate how wearing blinders can derail an entire society.

The post Håvard Bustnes – Golden Dawn Girls #IDFA2017 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Bernadett Tuza-Ritter, director of the film A Woman Captured.

Filmmaker Bernadett Tuza-Ritter presented A Woman Captured, her documentary feature debut, at the 30th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). The film follows the life of a Hungarian woman, Marish, who has been kept as a servant in a family for over a decade in extreme poor conditions – almost, in fact, as the title implies, as a captive. Tuza-Ritter met her through a woman, Eta, who bragged about having servants in her home. The director observes that when one is in the situation such as that experienced by Marish, “there is fear, but there is also a psychological freedom. If you are stuck in this situation, you cannot even imagine that there is an outside world.” In this interview she also tells us that when she found out about the nightmarish life of Marish, she tried to get outside help from institutions, who were unable to provide any type of assistance because “the door [was] not locked.” On the other hand, the film had a positive impact on Marish, and it soon became obvious to her that Marish enjoyed the attention, and that the film sometimes became an excuse for Tuza-Ritter not to leave Marish alone. In this interview, we talk about the style of A Woman Captured, and the stylistic choices that aim to make the audience understand how Marish felt. Given that A Woman Captured is Tuza-Ritter’s feature debut, we ask her what her interest in the story originated from, and whether this allowed her to explore thematic and artistic concepts that inspire her as an artist and storyteller.

A Woman Captured:  An intimate close-up of a woman with a lined face. She’s asleep, until the filmmaker whispers, “Marish.” Marish opens her eyes and sits up quickly, confused but smiling. This is an apt summary of what happened during the time director Bernadett Tuza-Ritter spent filming her. Marish has been exploited and abused for more than 10 years by the woman for whom she toils as a housekeeper—entirely unpaid. She even has to hand over the money she earns with an extra job as a cleaner in a factory. She’s forbidden to do anything without permission. Marish’s 18-year-old daughter couldn’t stand it anymore and ran away a couple of years ago, but Marish lives with too much fear in her heart. Can she ever learn to trust people again? Here the old question arises as to how much the presence of the camera influences the course of events. Cautiously, Marish starts to take Tuza-Ritter into her confidence. She dreams of seeing her daughter again. Will she find the courage to take a step forward in her life?

The post Bernadett Tuza-Ritter – A Woman Captured #IDFA2017 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Elizaveta Stishova, director of the film Suleiman Mountain.

Director Elizaveta Stishova talks about her film Suleiman Mountain, which she screened at the inaugural edition of the Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival in Pingyao, China. The film could be described as an unconventional road-trip-movie traveling through the countryside of Kyrgyzstan. Stishova talks about the presence of tradition in her film, the difficulties she encountered in making this movie, and about the actors. And then, the constant traveling, that not only defines the pace of Suleiman Mountain, but is also part of the tradition of the people of Kyrgyzstan, who have “always moved.” Among other things, Stishova also talks about her first experience in China, and why it reminds her of the past and the future of Russia.

Suleiman Mountain:  If circumstances become too difficult to bear, blatant lies may be the only means to create a truth. After his son Uluk is suddenly thrust back into his life, charismatic con artist Karabas takes to the road with his two wives, swindling everyone they encounter along their path. But Uluk has a strong conscience and, once confronted, Karabas must choose between his scheming ways or a life of fatherhood. A place of religious significance for millennia, Kyrgyzstan’s Takht-i-Suleiman mountain was the midpoint on the ancient Silk Road. It is said to be the burial ground of its namesake, the prophet Solomon, and believed to bring healthy children to any woman who ascends to its shrine and crawls across its holy rock. In a drama that could be torn from the pages of Dostoevsky, the film’s rogue family circles this ancient sight in search of healing. Suleiman Mountain is the debut feature of Russian director Elizaveta Stishova, who establishes herself as a master of texturing comedy and drama. Kyrgyz culture is woven brilliantly throughout with reference to the nation’s revered epic poem Manas, and the traditional cultures and customs of the countryside. Audiences will find themselves along on a claustrophobic and sometimes paranoid journey, where every turn is unknown and every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

The post Elizaveta Stishova – Suleiman Mountain #PYIFF appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews Zoe Cassavettes, director of the film Junior.

After directing two feature films, Zoe Cassavetes, daughter of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands decided that it was time to approach the world of the TV series. So, she created and directed Junior, a ten-part coming-of-age story produced by France’s Manny Films for digital media company Blackpills, starring Amy Seimetz and Eric Johnson. At the 12th Rome Film Fest – Alice nella Città Zoe Cassavetes presents Junior in a special screening while being in the “Camera d’Oro” jury for the best first film. As every episode of Junior is about 12 minutes long, the director explains how she managed to develop the characters and give them a very nuanced personality to which people can relate.

Junior: Teenage rebel Logan finds out that ‘coming of age’ is a lot harder than she thought. A coming-of-age, short-format series produced by France’s Manny Films for the newly launched platform Blackpills. Shot in LA and turning on a teenage girl, Junior will explore the psyche and unbridled sexuality of adolescents brought up with Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and other social media. The show centres on Logan, a 16-year-old New Yorker turned to Los Angeles trying to find her voice as a filmmaker as well as her place in a new high school. At home, Logan is confronted with her newly single mom and her mom’s problematically charming producer boyfriend. At school, she enters into a complicated friendship with classmate and muse Jess. In between it all, Logan tries—and epically fails—to embody the empowered female she wants to be, learning a hell of a lot about how relationships work in the process.

The post Zoe Cassavettes – Junior #RomaFF12 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews Trudie Styler, director of the film Freak Show.

Trudie Styler has participated in Rome Film Fest – Alice nella Città not only as juror of the official competition but also as a first time director of Freak Show, a coming of age story based on the cult novel by James St. James. The film stars Alex Lawther, Abigal Breslin (Oscar Nominee for Little Miss Sunshine) , Anna Sophia Robb (The Bridges of Terabithia, The Carrie Diaries) and sees the participation of Bette Midler. As the film deals with themes such as bullying, homosexuality and freedom of expression, Trudie Styler confirms that the film could be considered as an ode to diversity.

Freak Show : Billy Bloomonce lived a fabulous life in Connecticut, with his equally fabulous mother, Muv. But when he is suddenly shipped off to his father’s Southern mansion, he finds himself a fish out of water. With his closet of extravagant and flamboyant attire, Billy is completely different from the cheerleaders, bible belles and beefy quarterbacks at his new high school. Yet despite the well-meant advice of his father and his housekeeper Florence that he should just throw on some blue jeans, Billy is determined to be himself –even if that does mean wearing face glitter to school.With Muv missing in action, Billy experiences a culture clash the likes of which he has never known before –and his only allies come in the form of handsome football player and schoolboy crush Flip Kelly, and a chatterbox girl he calls Blah Blah Blah… because when she talks that’s all he hears.When Muv finally comes to visit, Billy thinks his troubles are over, but he is in for a shock that shakes him to the core. Just when it seems life can’t get any worse, his finds himself up against ultimate mean girl Lynette in a battle of tolerance versus ignorance. Billy’s indomitable spirit rises once again to challenge the conservative traditions of Grant Academy, taking him on a journey that will lead to extraordinary and hilarious results.

The post Trudie Styler – Freak Show #RomaFF12 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST| Chiara Nicoletti interviews Sally Potter, director of the film The Party.

A dinner is always an event to look forward to, whether it turns into a tragic haven for old resentment and untold secrets or into a special moment to share great news and happiness. The Party depicts both sides of a dinner and its director, Sally Potter manages to do it all perfectly in 71 minutes. The director of Orlando, in Rome to present the film in the Everybody’s talking about it section at the 12th Rome Film Fest, talks about all the meanings and messages underneath the surface of her film being about a woman celebrating her election to Minister with friends and family over dinner. The Party  is about politics but more deeply it’s a tragicomedy about the secrets behind our bourgeois lives and the lies we tell people but mostly to ourselves.

The Party : Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) has just been appointed to a key ministerial position in the shadow cabinet – the crowning achievement of her political career. She and her husband Bill (Timothy Spall) plan to celebrate this with a few close friends. As the guests arrive at their home in London the party takes an unexpected turn when Bill suddenly makes some explosive revelations that take everyone present by surprise. Love, friendships and political convictions are soon called into question in this hilarious comedy of tragic proportions. From acclaimed British filmmaker Sally Potter and featuring a star studded cast that includes Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer, Cillian Murphy, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Timothy Spall, this witty, sharp and very funny new comedy will be a unmissable date for everyone’s diary.

For the official page of the film, click here.

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