FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Pavle Vučković, director of the film Panama from the 2016 Transilvania International Film Festival.

Two college guys wanna have sex, and lots of it, to the point where they race each other in their sexual pursuits as a type of sporting competition. But it’s all a facade, because one of them, is falling in love. His denial of this very obvious fact is what makes up the bulk of the tension in Panama, the debut feature by Pavle Vuckovic. He argues in the film that this is the result of narcissism, which is a result influences of such things as pornography and social media.

Speaking of pornography, the film’s sexual creativeness lends significant meaning to the portrayal of the central couple, and the director shares his views on why that is. Panama is the first feature film by Vuckovic, and so we get an insight on his influences on this film (Hitchcock’s Vertigo for one) and the way in which, to paraphrase him, he changed perception of the film he was making it while making it.

PANAMA: Jovan starts dating Maja casually, no strings attached. But her mysterious behavior begins to disturb him. Jovan starts to follow videos and clues over social networks that hint at Maja’s parallel life. In a web of lies, jealousy and passionate sex, Jovan loses himself, desperately trying to understand who Maja really is.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Patric Chiha, director of the film Brothers of the Night from the 2016 Transilvania International Film Festival.

Young, wild and beautiful, a group of Bulgarian Roma resides in the belly of the Viennese Austrian underworld. Their profession? Seduction. Luring other men, mostly older and lonely, into living out their sexual fantasies with their charisma and bold courageousness, they moved to Austria from their native land for freedom and a quick buck, before giving into the temporary wealth of hustling. Filmmaker Patric Chiha is fascinated by them, as he shows in his documentary, Brothers of the Night. Fascinated, but protective, with his docuementary, but not of the conventional brand. In fact, as he explains in this interview, the film was really a collaboration between the boys and himself, in his pursuit of truth through fakery.

Beautifully, but intuitively shot, the film also serves as an homage to filmmakers such as Pasolini and Fassbinder. It also highlights themes of timelessness, culture clash and “temporary” beauty. There aren’t many films like it, especially about hustling, treated not as a social ill but like an exaltation of the blending of the fine – finer than usually thought of – between fantasy and prostitution. Why is that? Chiha tells us in this interview, “perhaps it’s not in fashion nowadays.” But with its own seductiveness, Brothers of the Night aims, and succeeds, to prove otherwise.

BROTHERS OF THE NIGHT (Brüder der Nacht): In an underworld, against the backdrop of the Danube and Vienna’s skyline, live the underdogs of respectable society. Sporting their leather jackets like suits of armour, these Bulgarian Roma pose, play and seduce Marlon Brando style. They moved to Vienna in search of adventure, freedom and a quick buck, but poverty has drawn them to sell their bodies instead. What is their story?

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Ibolya Fekete, director of the film Mom and Other Loonies in the Family from the 15th Transilvania International Film Festival.

Through Communism, anti-Jews laws and other such tragedies, a family in Hungary lived out its generational turn, tip toeing its way across a whole century. This is the story that filmmaker Ibolya Fekete tells, and it is a story that is deeply personal. The film was in fact inspired by the story of her own family, and the narrator of Mom and Other Loonies in the Family was inspired by her own mother, as she reveals.

Fekete did not make the film with a big budget, but as far as stylistic inventiveness is concerned, it looks a million bucks. We stop to talk about the film’s visual creativity, her process in selecting actors to play the many characters populating its narrative, and a key aspect of this film – humour. Despite the film’s informative nature, fascinating as much to an outsider as to a Hungarian on the history of the country, the film is defined by its warmth and its uplifting features. Life, is, after all a mixture of drama and comedy and, seeing as how Mom and Other Loonies in the Family portrays this sentiment, Fekete agrees.

MOM AND OTHER LOONIES IN THE FAMILY (Anyám és más futóbolondok a családból): A zany tale of a family in the 20th century. Four generations of fools with Mom in the focus, who has lived 92 years and moved 27 times in her life. Moving was her only means of dealing with trouble, danger or conflicts. Now she tells the story to her daughter – a playful, heart-warming and occasionally heartbreaking story.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Pablo Larrain, director of Neruda from the 69th Cannes Film Festival

Celebrated director Pablo Larrain returns on the FRED Film Radio “airwaves” to talk about his latest film, Neruda, presented in Director’s Fortnight, the independent section of the Cannes Film Festival. For the making of this film, Larrain was inspired by a specific speech the poet Pablo Neruda gave, in which he confessed to not be sure about whether some events in his life were real or imagined. In fact, the film is constructed on this very threading of the fine line between imagination – dreams – and reality, channelled through Larrain’s vision.

NERUDA: It’s 1948 and the Cold War has reached Chile. In congress, Senator Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco) accuses the government of betraying the Communist Party and is swiftly impeached by President Gonzalez Videla (Alfredo Castro). Police Prefect Oscar Peluchonneau (Gael García Bernal) is assigned to arrest the poet. Neruda tries to flee the country with his wife, the painter Delia del Carril (Mercedes Morán), but they are forced into hiding. Inspired by the dramatic events of his new life as a fugitive, Neruda writes his epic collection of poems, “Canto General”. Meanwhile, in Europe, the legend of the poet hounded by the policeman grows, and artists led by Pablo Picasso clamor for Neruda’s freedom. Neruda, however, sees this struggle with his nemesis Peluchonneau as an opportunity to reinvent himself. He plays with the inspector, leaving clues designed to make their game of cat-and-mouse more dangerous, more intimate. In this story of a persecuted poet and his implacable adversary, Neruda recognizes his own heroic possibilities: a chance to become both a symbol for liberty and a literary legend.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Kleber Mendonça Filho, director of Aquarius from the 69th Cannes Film Festival.

Kleber Mendonça Filho presented his film Aquarius in the main competition of the 69th Cannes Film Festival. Playing the leading role in the film, Sonia Braga, whose praises are sung by the director in this interview. The film, in his words, would simply have been totally different without her. He also talks about the energy, memories and nostalgia that houses hold and evoke and how fascinating and essential these aspects were to the making of Aquarius.

AQUARIUS: Clara, a 65 year old widow and retired music critic, was born into a wealthy and traditional family in Recife, Brazil. She is the last resident of the Aquarius, an original two-story building, built in the 1940s, in the upper-class, seaside Avenida Boa Viagem, Recife. All the neighboring apartments have already been acquired by a company which has other plans for that plot. Clara has pledged to only leave her place upon her death, and will engage in a cold war of sorts with the company, a confrontation which is both mysterious, frightening and nerve wracking. This tension both disturbs Clara and gives her that edge on her daily routine. It also gets her thinking about her loved ones, her past and her future.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interview Pia Lundberg, vice-president of European Film Promotion at the 69th Cannes Film Festival

Pia Lundberg of the Swedish Film Institute as Vice President of the European Film Promotion comments on FRED about the secret of the success of the networking platform Producers on the Move, which celebrates its 17th edition this year. She also announces two new initiatives the EFP will carry on: Future Frames at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the 10 Women Directors to watch at the Sydney Film Festival. The latter initiative marks the first time EFP, the Sydney Film Festival and Variety have joined forces to initiate “European Cinema: 10 Women Filmmakers to Watch,” presenting ten exceptional European women storytellers.

20 of the most energetic, emerging producers from across Europe are selected to participate in the networking platform PRODUCERS ON THE MOVE at the Cannes International Film Festival. EFP has set a high standard for participation and creates a tightly focused working environment involving project pitchings, 1:1 meetings as well as extensive promotion of the producers via profiles in the international trade papers. The aim of this initiative is to assist European producers in finding partners for their upcoming projects, to strengthen industry networking opportunities and to offer a platform where the producer’s potential is recognised.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Martin Schweighofer, president of European Film Promotion, at the 69th Cannes Film Festival.

Straight from the presentation of the 2016 edition of Producers on the Move at the 69th Cannes Film Festival, FRED Film Radio steals a moment away from the uber busy Martin Schweighofer, president of European Film Promotion, the institution that, among doing other things, organizes this annual networking event for emerging and talented European film producers. This year is no different. Producers on the Move returned to Cannes and we seized the opportunity to find out more about its selection criteria and the ultimate goal that Producers on the Move represents. We also ask Schweighofer how he feels the role of the film producer has changed throughout the years, especially the past 17 years in which Producers on the Move has been active.

20 of the most energetic, emerging producers from across Europe are selected to participate in the networking platform PRODUCERS ON THE MOVE at the Cannes International Film Festival. EFP has set a high standard for participation and creates a tightly focused working environment involving project pitchings, 1:1 meetings as well as extensive promotion of the producers via profiles in the international trade papers. The aim of this initiative is to assist European producers in finding partners for their upcoming projects, to strengthen industry networking opportunities and to offer a platform where the producer’s potential is recognised.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Helen Ahlsson, film commissioner of the Swedish Film Institute at the 69th Cannes Film Festival

FRED Film Radio, this year, followed closely the Producers on the Move networking platform. Therefore, it is a pleasure to be joined by a former participant, to tell us what impact this initiative had on her subsequent career. Helen Ahlsson started as a film producer and was a “Producer on the Move” ten years ago, in 2009. Now, she is a film commissioner at the Swedish Film Institute. In this interview, she tells us how being a film producer helped the way in which she selects the film projects to finance with the film commission in Sweden, and more.

20 of the most energetic, emerging producers from across Europe are selected to participate in the networking platform PRODUCERS ON THE MOVE at the Cannes International Film Festival. EFP has set a high standard for participation and creates a tightly focused working environment involving project pitchings, 1:1 meetings as well as extensive promotion of the producers via profiles in the international trade papers. The aim of this initiative is to assist European producers in finding partners for their upcoming projects, to strengthen industry networking opportunities and to offer a platform where the producer’s potential is recognised.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interview Alex Brendemuhl and Louis Garrel, actors in the film From the Land to the Moon by Nicole Garcia, presented at the 69th Cannes Film Festival.

FRED catches up with Alex Brendemuhl once again, this time with Louis Garrel, to talk about the film From the Land to the Moon (Mal de Pierre) by director Nicole Garcia. The film was presented in the main competition of the 69th Cannes Film Festival. Here, the two actors play respectively husband and lover of Gabrielle, played by Marion Cottillard. The film is an adaptation of an Italian novel titled Mal di Pietre. The two actors comment on working with Nicole Garcia and of the way in which they were directed for their roles.

FROM THE LAND TO THE MOON (Mal de Pierre): Gabrielle comes from a small village in the South of France, at a time when her dream of true love is considered scandalous, and even a sign of insanity. Her parents marry her to José, an honest and loving Spanish farm worker who they think will make a respectable woman of her. Despite José’s devotion to her, Gabrielle vows that she will never love José and lives like a prisoner bound by the constraints of conventional post-World War II society until the day she is sent away to a cure in the Alps to heal her kidney stones. There she meets André Sauvage, a dashing injured veteran of the Indochinese War, who rekindles the passion buried inside her. She promises they will run away together, and André seems to share her desire. Will anyone dare rob her of her right to follow her dreams?

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Jerome Paillard, head of the Marché du Film (Cannes Film Market) at the 69th Cannes Film Festival.

We talked with the director of the Marché du Film (Cannes Film Market) to get a grasp of some of the figures and facts of this year’s edition of one of the most important film markets in the world. Jerome Paillard has been head of the market for years, and therefore compares this year’s edition with previous edition, also discussing some of the market’s newest features and the impressions that he got of the current state of the industry, as well as its constantly changing trends, innovations and techniques.

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