FRED Film Radio - English Channel

A quiet but powerful portrait of displacement, femininity, and the elusive meaning of home, Or Sinai’s debut feature Mama had its Special Screening at the 78th Festival de Cannes.

A Story Born from Real Encounters

"Mama" follows Mila, a 50-year-old Polish immigrant who, after years working for a wealthy family in Israel, returns to her native village in Poland—and to the family she left behind. But the homecoming is far from simple. As Sinai explains, “She thinks she belongs to both homes… but actually, it’s not true.”

The film was inspired by Sinai’s real-life experience. “My mother has Parkinson’s, and a few years ago they took in an immigrant worker… I started talking to her, and she told me stories about her lover in Israel and her family in Ukraine.” Those conversations sparked a fascination with the inner lives of women often viewed only through the lens of sacrifice or service.

Beyond the Clichés: Mila as a Woman, Not Just a Migrant

Sinai resists the typical narrative of the suffering caregiver. “We’re used to seeing immigrant women as poor, sacrificing… but Mila has desires, femininity. She didn’t let go of herself.” That emotional complexity is what makes Mama feel so layered. It’s not just about return—it’s about the haunting dissonance between who you were, who you’ve become, and who you pretend to be.

A Film Built on Dualities

The production itself reflects Mila’s split identity. Sinai worked with separate costume and production design teams in Israel and Poland. “It didn’t make sense that an Israeli designer would build a Polish home, and vice versa,” she notes. The contrast between these worlds isn’t just visual—it’s emotional, cultural, and deeply human.

The houses in the film become symbols of belonging and illusion. “She has this illusion that she belongs to all of them, but slowly all of it collapsed.” Sinai once considered calling the film Home—but the eventual title, Mama, carries its own irony. “She wants to be the best mother but she doesn’t know how to do it. The word has this warmth… and Mila is the opposite of that.”

A Visual Language of Intimacy

Sinai and cinematographer Matan Radin created a visual style that draws us into Mila’s emotional world. “We let the actors move freely, and only then built the camera around them,” she says. The result is an organic intimacy—sometimes raw, sometimes distant—that mirrors Mila’s inner tension.

The Fragility of Filmmaking

Making "Mama"  wasn’t easy. The film was originally set in Ukraine before the war broke out in 2022. “Our co-producer went to the military. We lost funding. It was tough to believe in cinema again.” On top of that, Sinai directed in a language she didn’t speak. “I’m a control freak… but when I let go, it was beautiful. You don’t need the words—you feel the emotions.”

Redefining ‘Home’

In a final reflection, Sinai touches on what “home” means to her now: “Especially now, with what’s happening in Israel… home is not so clear. But maybe it’s about being true to your instincts. About finding yourself.”

"Reedland" by Sven Bresser is included in the selection for the Critics' Week, at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. The film ticks all the boxes of the murder mystery genre, but it elevates and become a surprising and fascinating tale about the life of a  simple man in the rural Netherlands facing new challenges inside of himself. An astounding attention for framing and the vision on nature in such a peculiar way that the audience is absorbed in this story and its images.

Places I knew, and a nature I loved and feared at the same time

Sven Bresser knew the region of the Netherlands where "Reedland" takes place. His childhood was spent there too, and visiting and living the life of reed cutters made the rest. The perception of nature is one of love and fascination but also of fear as it becomes a place where things and tragedies can be hidden - like the body of a dead girl.

A splendid lead character, played by a non actor

The strength of " Reedland" lays on the lead character, Johan, played by a real reed cutter in such a powerful and striking way. Sven Bresser tells us that the process fo directing a non actor was peculiar and that the main secret has been of give him space in the movements and not telling him too much about the scenes, letting him living them in his own terms

Discover how Fred.Fm highlights the rise of Piedmont’s film industry at Cannes, showcasing new projects, funding boosts, and the region’s creative future.

Chilean director Sebastián Lelio is at the 78th Cannes Film Festival to present "La Ola" in the Cannes Premiere section.

The Oscar Winner for "A Fantastic Woman" is again portraying women, in a musical he produced with Juan de Dios Larraín, Pablo Larraín and Rocío Jadue about the historic feminist occupation and massive protests in May 2018.

With a screenplay he wrote with acclaimed writers Manuela Infante, Josefina Fernández and Paloma Salas, the film relies on a cast of brilliant new faces such as Daniela López as the protagonist Julia, Lola Bravo as Rafa, Avril Aurora as Luna and Paulina Cortés as Tamara.

Mixing entertaining and political, the film not only talks and “sings” about the struggles women still have to face when it comes to redefining their relationship with men who are still carrying a patriarchal system but, at the same time focus on the Latin American situation which, in some cases, have still a lot of battles to fight and win.

21 years after co-directing “Take out“ with Sean Baker, director and producer Shih-Ching Tsou is competing, at Cannes 78, at the Semaine de la critique with “Left-Handed Girl“.

The film, produced, co-written and edited by Sean Baker, is Shih-Ching Tsou’s first solo project. A family story inspired by a vivid memory, says Shih-Ching Tsou: “my grandfather once told me not to use my left hand because it was the devil’s hand”.

“Left-Handed Girl“, as the title suggests, is a female lead story set in Taiwan and it follows a single mother and her two daughters trying to make it in Taipei.

Shih-Ching Tsou starts from “the left hand’s belief” in order to dismantle it in favor of women taking their own path despite their fear of judgment or rejection.

Japanese director Kei Ishikawa is at the 78th Cannes Film Festival with his new film "A pale view of hills", screening in the Un certain Regard section.

The film is a big screen adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro novel of the same title. As it is Ishiguro’s 1982 debut novel, one of only two novels the author set in Japan, it remained un-adapted for the screen until today.

Ishiguro, who became a co-producer of the film, became also a mentor for Ishikawa, as he was “truly delighted” by the fact that his novel could be turned into a film by a Japanese director from the next generation.

"A pale view of hills" tells the story of a young Japanese-British writer who plans to write a book based on her mother Etsuko’s post-war experiences in Nagasaki.

The film delves into the past of a nation and reflects on memories, on and on how the new generation is dealing with the past, 80 years after the war.

With "I Only Rest in the Storm", Portuguese director Pedro Pinho is back on the Croisette – eight years after presenting his first fiction feature, the nearly 3-hour-long social musical/spoken film "The Nothing Factory", at the Directors Fortnight –, this time in the Un Certain Regard sidebar. His new formidable effort (at three hours and a half which frankly go by without one's noticing or minding), incredibly nuanced and humanistic, set in Guinea-Bissau around the story of a Portuguese expert meant to evaluate the ecological and social impact of the construction of a road through traditional rice plantations, opens a vertiginous array of paths of reflection upon his presence and the presence of other expats (from former Portuguses colonies, humanitary organisations) and foreign workers, the variety within the local population, certain power dynamics...

On the continuity between this film set in Africa and Pedro Pinho's first feature, set in a factory

"The proposal of this film was to take further the possibility of working with the word, the spoken word and political views as cinematic material. How can we transform something that is not cinematic at all into something that has cinematic value."

About the fact that dualisms are a persistent way of understanding the world, but are actually never quite so clear

"The subject of identity and fluidity is a very strong presence in the film. This idea of creating a polyphony of perspectives also favours a blurring of the borders of the self – who am I? Who am i in relation to others? How do the others see me?"

On polyphony, voices and languages

"When I first went to this part of the world, I was struck by the fact that people, children, can speak up to four or five languages – the language of the street, of the mother, of the father, of the coloniser, the official language –, so immediately, they are used to dealing with that proliferation of cultures and ways of thinking, whilst Europe is more monolithic and imposed that upon the world. (…) There are many languages in the film and there’s also a game of who understands who."

On continuing to learn throughout the shoot

"The writing process was ongoing until the end of the shoot, and of course even during the editing, but it was really informed by the actors and the people that we met along the way during the shoot."

French-Tunisian director and producer Erige Sehiri opened the Un Certain Regard section of the 78th Cannes Film Festival with "Promised Sky (Promis le ciel)", a colourful and energetic tale on three Sub-Saharan women of different ages, backgrounds and situations – a pastor, a student, and an exiled mother, played by Aïssa Maïga, Laetitia Ky and newcomer Déborah Christelle Naney, respectively – stuck in Tunis on their way to a (hypothetical) better life.

"Promised Sky" is Sehiri's second feature film after "Under the Fig Trees", screened in Cannes in 2022, at the Directors' Fortnight, and chosen as the Tunisian submission for the Academy Award for the Best International Feature Film. Before that, she made and produced, through her company Henia, various Tunisian author-driven documentaries, including her breakout feature documentary, "Railway Men" (2018).

On the situation of in-betweenness of the three main protagonists we meet in Tunis

"I felt like there were many stories about migration, but we were missing a link in the chain: we have stories about people arriving in Europe, migrants struggling in Europe, but we don’t have the stories from before, when they are stopped somewhere, stopped or stuck, depending on the character. Now there is a barrier in Europe, so North Africa becomes this stop."

On the female solidarity and community that shines since the very first minutes

"The idea is that what you arrive in the foreign country, you can live with people with whom you would never live in your own country. That’s what happens here: Marie the pastor is welcoming the student and she welcoming a child, and she’s welcoming Naney, a girl who’s doing shady businesses. In real life, if they were from the same country but from different social classes, their paths probably wouldn’t cross so much, but because they’re in a foreign country, where it’s difficult, they become a family."

On the presence of Kenza, the little isolated girl whose very origins are difficult to trace

"A few months before the shoot, when I was going to Sunday services for my research and spending time with the community, I met this little six-year-old girl, and one day, I went back to the church and I asked where she was, because I didn't see her anymore (…), and I was told that she crossed over with her mother, and that they died in the Mediterranean Sea, that unfortunately they didn’t make it. I was devastated and I started thinking about the children, who didn’t choose that. And then I heard of survivors, children survivors, who don't know where their parents are. For me, it asks the question of who is responsible for these children: is it the state they’re in, even though the state is against them as a community, or is it the community itself."

On the energetic, thoughtful, and colourful cinematography 

I have the best DOP, Frida Marzouk, she's a friend, and we talked a lot about the colours and when I went to Naney's place, her room in real life, and she opened her closet, she had a lot of pink, and she had the pink dress that is in the film, and I said 'Oh my God, that’s the colour of Naney!' And the blue of course is the sea, the sky, and all these promises of something else, And those became the two colours of the film: blue and pink."

Alexe Poukine is in competition at the 64th Critics Week of the 78th Cannes Film Festival with her first fiction feature, "Kika", after several documentaries – including the multi-award-winning "Who Cares?", where medical students and experienced care workers were put in front of actors portraying patients for some case simulations – and the mid-length film "Palma" – where she played the protagonist, inspired by her own life as a struggling mother, and which won the Jury Prize at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, amongst others.

"Kika", whilst maintaining strong ties with reality and presenting a nicely fleshed set of characters evading all stereotypes (including real-life sex workers), transports the viewer, together with the endearing eponymous character (played by Manon Clavel), into a quirky universe terming with absurd and hilarious situations which makes for many laughs, but also touches with the warmth and humanity it conveys.

On writing a film which broaches so many different subjects

Alexe Poukine: "In the original script, there were so many layers, so Thomas Van Zuylen came in to cowrite with me, three years after I began, he suggested we should cut some of them, but I wouldn’t. It was very hard to keep all these layers, but for me, it was like making lasagna: I wanted the film to be dense, because I don’t like films that you can sum up easily – which is why I hate pitching. In fact, during the shoot, people sometimes stopped us on the street, to ask what the film was about, and each member of the crew was saying something different. It was very fun for me to see they didn’t think we were talking about the same thing. The only scenes we cut, during the editing, involved a rat."

On the many rooms, flats, stairwells, etc. we visit throughout the film  

"With the DOP Colin Leveque, we wanted Kika to always be in movement, so we mainly tried to find settings large enough to follow her all the time, because we wanted her to move all the time… What I like is that the only place where she can get intimacy is a hotel room, which is quite ambiguous because it’s not private – it's yours for an hour, and you have to pay for this intimacy. All film long, she’s just trying to find a place, like in the book A Room of One’s Own. I was thinking about this all the time: how to find a place, your place, where you can just be."

Belgian director Laura Wandel is back in Cannes with her second feature film, Adam’s sake.

The film, in competition at the Semaine de la critique, relies entirely on two extraordinary protagonists Léa Drucker and Anamaria Vartolomei, playing respectively a nurse and a young mother whose child has been hospitalized for malnutrition.

Anamaria Vartolomei, who became well known to the international audience thanks to the 2021 Venice Golden Lion’s winner L'Événement, was selected to represent France at the 2022 Berlinale Shooting stars.

In collaboration with the European Film promotion (EFP), founder of the Shooting stars programme, we interviewed Anamaria Vartolomei, among the 16 former Shooting Stars in the Cannes line-up this year.

The EFP is a network of film institutions from 37 European countries, bringing European films and talent to the attention of the international industry and media and the Shooting stars project brings ten promising, versatile European acting newcomers to the Berlin International Film Festival each year.

Ana Vartolomei tells us about her memories from that Berlinale 2022 and how she enriched her experience as an actress while sharing it with colleagues from other countries.

What does it mean to be an European actor? “it means being also nourished by other cultures, other societies, other forms of living and I feel all that makes us grow as humans and make us grow as actors too” declares Vartolomei.