FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Dietrich Brüggemann, director of Heil from the Lecce European Film Festival 2016.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture of the film

With his film Heil, director Dietrich Brüggemann has shown people and international audiences that it is possible to portray Neo-Nazis, their misconception and crazy ideas through satire. It is possible to make a political film by not talking politics. With Burn After Reading and the Three Stooges in mind, Bruggemann reveals how satire was the only possible format for him to portray Neo-Nazis life stories of contemporary Germany.

The film was showcased in the new section of Festival del Cinema Europeo di Lecce: European Comedy.

HEIL: Welcome to Prittwitz. The acclaimed Afro-German author Sebastian Klein is on a reading tour in the East German backwater and is given a fitting welcome by local neo-Nazis: a blow to the head. Sebastian promptly loses his memory and parrots everything people tell him. Nina, Sebastian’s pregnant girlfriend in Berlin, is highly agitated. Without further ado she travels to Prittwitz and teams up with the village policeman Sascha to track down her boyfriend. He is in the hands of the neo-Nazis and their leader Sven and feels right at home among them. Smirking, he appears on talk shows and mouths the slogans that Sven whispers to him. A “blackie” railing against integration – the public goes crazy. And Sven sees himself finally on his way to becoming an opinion leader…

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Bjuar Alimani, director of the film Chromium, from the 2016 European Film Festival in Lecce

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture of the film

The director Bujar Alimani presented his film Chromium in Lecce, and reveals to us how he realized that two of the main characters of the film were based on two brothers he knew in his childhood.

With his first feature film Amnesty, Alimani won the Jury prize in Lecce and he couldn’t wait to participate again with a new film. The intent of the film was to portray Albanian society, not the one living in the very European Tirana but the small villages’.

CHROMIUM: After having lost two husbands, a mute woman a mother of two young boys has to survive and support her family by sheer will. Her older boy a 15 year old tries to come onto his own while attending school and illegally finding work at a Chromium mine nearby. A man that finds himself amidst a woman’s love and her young adolescent son’s jealous tantrums. A young female math teacher who loves rock music and has rebelled against her parent’s wishes of following the path of a comfortable life in the capital. She appears as a guardian angel helping and guiding the young 15 year old boy in his journey towards manhood.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Stina Werenfels, director of Dora or the Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents, from the 2016 Lecce European Film Festival.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture of the film

Fred’s Chiara Nicoletti meets Stina Werenfels in Lecce at the European Film Festival – Festival del Cinema Europeo to present her new film Dora or the sexual neuroses of our parents. The film’s intent is to change people’s attitude and beliefs surrounding metal disabilities and idealized motherhood. Everything is up for a discussion in the film: what defines a good mother from a bad one, fertility and genetic tests, idealized motherhood.

It took Stina almost 7 years to make the film and the reason behind all these production difficulties lays mostly in the themes and topics Werenfels treats.

DORA OR THE SEXUAL NEUROSES OF OUR PARENTS: Dora is 18 and bursting with curiosity. Her mother Kristin has recently taken Dora off her sedating medication. The learning disabled young woman throws herself into all that life has to offer – this includes an infatuation with a man. To Kristin’s horror the two have a spontaneous sexual encounter that soon develops into a liaison: the morally dubious man is clearly drawn to Dora’s uninhibited sexuality. While Kristin tries in vain for another child, Dora finds herself pregnant…

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PODCAST: FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti interviews Stephan James, actor of the film Race by Stephen Hopkins.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture of the film

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti meets Stephan James , protagonist of Race by Stephen Hopkins , in Rome for the Italian Release of the film. Race is based on the true story of James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens, the afro-american atlete who, in 1936, participated in the Berlin Olympic Games and, despite racism and the Nazi regime in Germany, won 4 golden medals. Stephan James is very proud of being the voice of this great story and to have portrayed an hero in World History.

RACE: Based on the incredible true story of Jesse Owens, the legendary athletic superstar whose quest to become the greatest track and field athlete in history thrusts him onto the world stage of the 1936 Olympics, where he faces off against Adolf Hitler’s vision of Aryan supremacy. Race is an enthralling film about courage, determination, tolerance, and friendship, and an inspiring drama about one man’s fight to become an Olympic legend.

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PODCAST | FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Jan Cvitkovič, director of the film Siska Deluxe from the 2016 Febiofest Prague International Film Festival.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture of the film

This year, Febiofest dedicated a whole section as a tribute to Slovenian director Jan Cvitkovič, who also presented his latest film Siska Deluxe in its program. A comedy flirting with absurdism and also deals with some more delicate and serious issues, in this interview we ask him about the origins of the film, how he constructed it and cast it.

We also ask him more generally about what his infleunces are, and he reveals that his background is more from literature than from films. He also says that everytime he finishes a project he tells himself it will be the last, although it never is. How does he feel now that Siska Deluxe is finished? The same!

SISKA DELUXE: The absurd comedy takes place in the neighbourhood of Siska in Ljubljana. Mile is a forty-something smartass living with his mother – the same age as his friends, Fedr, a former skinhead and now a divorced father, and an ex-punk and orphan, Zekir. Their plan to open a pizza place is a chance to change their abysmal lives, but since they can’t stop acting like utter losers, customers don’t exactly flock to their venue. But then mysterious Jana inspires them to offer a unique service of “Siska Deluxe” with their pizza: Order a pizza together with anything that would make you happy, and we’ll arrange it! Business immediately skyrockets and it seems that everybody in Siska is happier thanks to the “wish-granting pizza”. Will Siska Deluxe also bring luck to the protagonists themselves?

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PODCAST | FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews director Anwar Safa and screenwriter Ana Sofia Clerici on their film Jeremy from the 2016 Febiofest Prague International Film Festival.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture of the film

“3 out of 100 people in the world are geniuses, but they don’t even know it,” says director Anwar Safa. His film Jeremy, written by Ana Sofia Clerici, looks at this concept, and does so by also telling the charming story of a kid growing up in a less privileged side of Mexico. A delightful coming of age comedy.

We talk about it with Safa and Clerici, who reveal sides about the production, including working with the young boy (Martin Castro), who does an excellent job as the titular and central character. They also talk about the influences on the film, the wish to make their story universal, but also set their first feature aside from the usual Mexican film that usually makes it on the international film curcuit. “We have a lot to show in Mexico, not just the Narcos and the violence,” Safa says. “And we want to show all that.”

JEREMY: Eight-year-old Jeremy asks shocking questions about death during the routine family evening with a soap opera, responds to reprimands for his cheekiness towards nuns with Nietzsche’s quotes, and concisely comments on the troubles with his basically loving yet not very enlightened family and his bored school teacher. The young genius decides to take fate in his own hands and find out who he might be – with a picture of Albert Einstein on the wall, with old geezers whom he beats in chess, and a street gang whose homework he does. From the unique perspective of a little boy with IQ of 160 looking for his spot in the world, the comedy blends sarcasm with kindness, in bright colours and with a playful camera.

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PODCAST: FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Dariusz Gajewski, director of the film Strange Heaven from the 2016 Febiofest Prague International Film Festival

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture of the film

Is it enough to have the best intentions in mind to do good. This is something Dariusz Gajewski examines in his latest feature Strange Heaven. Here, the story of a Polish family living in Sweden and seeing her child being taken away by social services seems to hence represent something more.

Gajewski talks about the contrast in culture between Poland and Sweden and three different languages in the film – Swedish, Polish and English. On top of this, we ask him about how he worked with the young actress who plays the important role of the child in the film, and where Strange Heaven will be screening in the near future as well as why he thinks it should particularly be screened in Europe.

STRANGE HEAVEN: The family drama about cultural dialogues, or, more specifically, about cultural differences, is inspired by true events when Polish children in Scandinavia were removed from their families and placed in foster care. Not succumbing to a black-and-white interpretation, the film sensitively ponders the consequences of people acting with best intentions. A Polish family with a seven-year-old daughter lives in a small town in northern Sweden, looking for peace and prosperity. After a series of misunderstandings, the child is taken away by Swedish social services, and the parents have a month to get the girl back before she’s permanently adopted.

Obce Niebo / Strange Heaven 2015 TRAILER from Kuba Kosma on Vimeo.

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PODCAST: FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Armel Hostiou, director of the film Stubborn from the 23rd Febiofest Prague International Film Festival.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture of the film

Love can make you happy, love can make you sad. In the case of Stubborn, the feature film by Armel Hostiou, love is a destructive force.

The “stubborn” character in this film is Vincent, a Frenchman who travels to America to win his ex-girlfriend back. We discuss with the director this theme, as well as other elements in the film that contribute to its being so powerful, such as the setting of the city of New York being a character in the film in its own right.

Hostiou tells us that he wrote the screenplay with actor Vincent Macaigne in mind for the lead role, and we discuss his contribution to the overall project. We also talk about the production itself, and his decision to film a final act of the film almost a year later, after getting some additional funding.

STUBBORN: New York City is the stage for thousands of stories of love, breaking up and rediscovering lost love every day and night. Vincent travels from France to NYC in hopes of getting back his ex-girlfriend, Barbara. However, she has a new lover and is satisfied with her life, unlike loser Vincent. Vincent’s conviction that he will get her back with a grandiose romantic gesture clashes with Barbara’s desire to send Vincent back to France and out of her life. In an almost documentary style, the intimate New York odyssey follows the path of love which transforms into obstinate desperation in the merciless metropolis of random encounters.

STUBBORN Trailer from BOCALUPO FILMS on Vimeo.

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PODCAST: FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Peter Gašparík, screenwriter of The Cleaner from the 2016 Febiofest Prague International Film Festival.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture of the film

Loneliness and the effects of childhood trauma. These are the two driving elements in The Cleaner, a Slovak giallo that marks the second collaboration between director Peter Bebjak and screenwriter Peter Gašparík. The two wrote the screenplay together, and Gašparík talks about where the inspiration of the film came from. Deepening the effect of the study of the theme of loneliness, is the approach used for the feature, which makes use of very little dialogue. We ask him about the challenges of using this particular approach, and how important the casting was and what the actors brought to the table in terms of making things that might have appeared to be challenging to the final work.

THE CLEANER: Tomas works for a funeral service as a cleaner. He gets the keys to the apartments of the deceased and scrubs dirt and blood while relatives mourn. He enjoys hiding behind wardrobe doors or under beds, spying on the grieving guests who have no idea that the funeral service worker has stayed a bit longer. When the granddaughter of a dead woman visits the flat, Tomas in his hideout witnesses something not intended for the eyes of a stranger. After the romantic Apricot Island (2011) and horror Evil (2012), Slovak director Peter Bebjak switches genres once again, this time presenting an unsettling drama.

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PODCAST: FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews actress Emília Vášáryová talks about her role in Eva Nová from the 2015 Febiofest Prague International Film Festival.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture of the film

After meeting director Marko Skop at the Torino Film Festival last year, FRED catches up with the leading actress of Eva Nova, Emilia Vasaryova. Vasaryova’s over fifty year career has earned her the reputation as the First Lady of Slovak Theatre and Film.

In her latest turn in Skop’s film, she takes on one of her most difficult roles to date, in the form of the titular characters, an old washed up actress with a history of substance and alcohol abuse who tries to start life anew against all odds, including a near impossible reconciliation with her estranged son. A brave turn by Vasaryova, whose presence dominates the film, and as the camera looks upon her sometimes mercilessly, in the most physical moments.

We ask her about how her journey in the making of this film lasted, the different versions of the script that existed before the final one. We also ask her about the use of images, film posters and film stills from her own works, another element that shows her commitment not only to the character to the film. Vasaryova explains that she herself does not have a history of alcoholism, nor does her family, but the story of downfall is one that she has seen take place among other actors and actresses. This observation makes us reflect about the similarities between reality escapism in the form of acting, and in the form of alcoholism.

It is a real treat for FRED to be joined by Vasaryova, whose sunny personality can be heard all throughout the interview. “Life is tragicomic,” she observes. And Eva Nova is a feature that shows us just that.

EVA NOVA: After several previous attempts, Eva is leaving rehab once more, ready for the outside world and determined to stay sober. Above all, she hopes to gain the forgiveness of her family and especially her son, who banishes her with just a suitcase upon her return. Once a well-known actress, famous for her roles as well as her alcoholic escapades, Eva is starting from scratch. The subtle and authentically precise story about a family, alcoholism, and rediscovering one’s dignity is governed by attention to detail. The feature debut of Martin Skop, a documentary director, features excellent performances, especially by Emilia Vasaryova in the role of her life.

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