FRED Film Radio - English Channel

At the 28th Far East Film Festival, legendary director Mabel Cheung offered deep reflections on the intimate relationship between cinema and memory. Celebrated for weaving Hong Kong’s historical texture into personal narratives, Mabel Cheung described her body of work as an inadvertent archive. Looking back at films such as City of Glass, she explained that her primary impulse was not to produce a deliberate historical document but to preserve the landmarks of her own life. That personal urgency, she said, is what gives her films enduring emotional weight, particularly as Hong Kong’s physical and cultural landscape continues to change rapidly.

During the festival conversation, Mabel Cheung recalled the precise moment that sparked City of Glass: the imminent demolition of her university dormitory, which felt like the erasure of her youth. That anxiety about loss extended to the city’s identity, especially around the 1997 transition. Mabel Cheung admitted she feared even street names such as Queen’s Road Central might disappear or be recast by a different historical narrative. By committing these details to film, she managed to freeze elements of a moment in time, safeguarding the values and memories of a generation and making them continually accessible through cinema’s long memory.

As a juror at the 28th Far East Film Festival, Mabel Cheung is charged with identifying the cinematic voices likely to shape the industry’s future. Asked what she looks for in emerging filmmakers, she emphasized that technical perfection is not her main criterion. Instead, she seeks authenticity and the honest transmission of feeling. For a veteran like Mabel Cheung , the most important quality in a film is its capacity to leave a lasting impression on the viewer’s memory. She noted that this year’s FEFF selection includes several directors who demonstrate that sincere emotional delivery.

Serving on the festival jury gives Mabel Cheung a privileged vantage point to observe the evolution of contemporary storytelling. She expressed satisfaction with the vitality of today’s Asian cinema, observing that many promising directors are supported by exceptional actors who help realize their visions. For Mabel Cheung , being in Udine is not merely a professional obligation; it is an opportunity to witness the emergence of a new generation of filmmakers who are as frank and courageous as the masters who came before them. Her presence at FEFF 2026 continues to motivate audiences and inspire young creators, reinforcing the festival’s role as a space where memory, history, and fresh cinematic voices converge.

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Debuting on Prime Video from April 29th in over 240 countries and territories, “The House of the Spirits” is the first Spanish-language serial adaptation of Isabel Allende‘s beloved novel.

Produced by FilmNation Entertainment, the Oscar-winning company behind “Anora” and “Conclave”, the eight-episode saga spans half a century and three generations of women: Clara, Blanca and Alba, navigating love, magic and political upheaval in a conservative South American country. Alongside showrunners Francisca Alegría and Fernanda Urrejola, Chilean director Andrés Wood, known internationally for “News of a Kidnapping”, completed the trio that brought this big project to the screen.

Andrés Wood is clear about one thing from the start: the milestones for this project were Francisca Alegría and Fernanda Urrejola, long before he came on board. What drew him in, once he did, was a deep personal connection to the material. He read “The House of the Spirits” as a young man in Chile in the late 1980s, when the book was still forbidden. “I didn’t realize it then, but rereading it when they asked me to work on the project, I understood that this idea of mixing the political and the social with personal life is something absolutely related to my own work.”

Asked whether Isabel Allende‘s work feels prophetic today, Andrés Wood reaches for something broader: the magic of the classics. “They allow you to reread them again and again, and the same words have different meanings each time.” Our lives, he says, move in cycles, two steps forward, one step back and what we are living today is clearly connected to the book, to the story of this family across fifty years. The parallels are not coincidental. They are structural.

Translating this novel to the screen has never been easy.  The 1993 film, for all its extraordinary cast, had to cut an entire generation and compress the story drastically. A series of eight episodes was still a great challenge, Andrés Wood says, though he feels the format finally does justice to the material’s scale. “It can always be more but we felt so privileged to be able to do it at all. Twenty years ago, ten years ago, it would have been impossible to make this series in Spanish with Latin actors shot in Chile.”

Like his co-showrunners, Andrés Wood embraced the novel’s deliberate ambiguity about its setting while remaining firmly rooted in Chilean specificity. “We didn’t want to just be Chile, but the landscape is Chile, we have desert, volcanoes, lakes, rivers.” FilmNation and Amazon were generous in allowing them to shoot on location, and the team found what Andrés Wood describes as a good midpoint: being particular enough to carry the genuine DNA of a culture, while speaking broadly enough to connect with a global audience. It is, he notes, the same thing the novel does, never naming Chile, yet unmistakably Chilean on every page.

For Andrés Wood, the most important creative decision Francisca Alegría and Fernanda Urrejola made, one the 1993 film did not, was to make absolutely clear that the story is being told from the point of view of Alba, the fourth generation. “It’s her point of view always. She’s telling the story because she has a great-grandmother, a grandmother and a mother who helped her tell it. That’s the modern thing for me.” In a moment when patriarchy, he says, is operating at full energy, the clarity of that narrative perspective, a woman who has survived, who understands, who chooses healing over hatred, feels essential.

The post “The House of the Spirits”, interview with showrunner Andrés Wood appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

Debuting on Prime Video from April 29th in over 240 countries and territories, “The House of the Spirits” is the first Spanish-language serial adaptation of Isabel Allende’s beloved novel.

Produced by FilmNation Entertainment, the Oscar-winning company behind “Anora” and “Conclave”, the eight-episode saga spans half a century and three generations of women: Clara, Blanca and Alba, navigating love, magic and political upheaval in a conservative South American country.

The series stars Alfonso Herrera as Esteban Trueba, with Nicole Wallace and Dolores Fonzi sharing the role of Clara del Valle, and features an extraordinary pan-Latin American cast. Isabel Allende, Eva Longoria and Courtney Saladino serve as executive producers alongside showrunners Francisca Alegría, Fernanda Urrejola and Andrés Wood.

For Francisca Alegría and Fernanda Urrejola, the project began long before cameras rolled.  “It has been an amazing journey, a dream come true”, they say, right at the beginning of the interview. They had initially thought about adapting a smaller Allende novel, something no one could have the rights to when finally FilmNation brought them the project. “It was very serendipitous and magical.” As Chilean women, they knew exactly what this novel meant: “Isabel Allende is a hero, she wrote this novel during the dictatorship, in exile, not knowing how long it was going to last.” The trip to Berlin, at the 76th Berlinale, where the show was presented ahead of its global launch, felt like the final stretch of a very long labour. “It’s like giving birth to a child”, they both declare.

The timing of the adaptation feels anything but coincidental. When they first received the news that they would be adapting the novel, it was right after the Chilean social revolt of 2019 with the wound of the dictatorship reopening, people confronting the police in the streets. “It felt like a collective emotional awakening” they say, “and we thought: we’re adapting this novel now.” Sadder still, the feeling has only grown since. “We see this rise of violence and fascism and suddenly we feel that we are not so free after all.” Chile, they note, is a country that has never fully reckoned with its history as two versions of the past live in parallel, never coexisting. “We need to stop talking about right and left and start talking about humanity and how to take care of each other.” Telling this story now, through the eyes of Alba, a granddaughter who can finally articulate what the women before her could not speak out, felt not just timely but necessary.

Isabel Allende herself told them that her novel was, at its core, about how patriarchy operates and destroys everything. What Francisca Alegría and Fernanda Urrejola wanted to preserve was its vision of female power: not a power modelled on male violence or dominance, but something quieter and more radical. “These women are powerful because they are women, in a very feminine way. They don’t need to become like men and fight with violence in order to be heard.” Clara doesn’t fight back, she creates a different reality for herself and her loved ones. Alba, at the end, doesn’t respond to horror with hatred: she focuses on healing, on compassion, on understanding that things could now be done differently. “It’s not about revenge. It’s not about women being more powerful than men, it’s about collaboration.”

When asked how this experience shaped them, both personally and artistically, Francisca Alegría and Fernanda Urrejola confirm that it was, for them, a life-changing experience. “I am completely a different woman after making this show,  in all the senses,” says one. “We were not only talking about story,  we were healing our own stories through writing.” On set, they created spaces of nurturing for the actresses , circles of conversation, not rehearsal, where emotions could be held safely before demanding scenes. “ It is, they say, precisely the kind of care that the industry too rarely offers and exactly what this story asks of everyone who tells it.

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During the second edition of the Stop e-Motion Days in Mestre, we had a long conversation with the legendary co-founder and creative director of Aardman Animations, Peter Lord.  This years marks the 50th anniversary for the stop-motion animation studio, a reality that has brought to life unforgettable characters like Wallace & Gromit, and delivered instant-classics such as “Chicken Run” and “Shaun the Sheep“. With an influence and a legacy that still is incredibly relevant also in modern animation.

Aardman Animations is indeed a studio that is still determined to shape innovative storytelling and craftsmanship in the animation world, with its historic IPs, with its classic British humour but now also with a more international overview and unexpected collaborations.

Peter Lord talked about how Aardman Animations still stands today as a testament to creative excellence in the world of animated films and series: the world has changed quite a lot from the moment the studio was born 50 years ago, but it still remains renowned for its distinct stop-motion style and memorable characters. The studio has indeed been a pioneer in blending traditional techniques with modern storytelling, crafting iconic characters from Morph to Wallace & Gromit, but also Shaun the Sheep and the main protagonists of “Chicken Run“, and they all have become in some way true cultural icons. The studio’s commitment to quality and its ability to maintain a uniquely British humor while appealing to global viewers have cemented its legacy in animation history, factors that are still a trademark today.

Lord has stressed his attention also on how Aardman Studio has always believed in the audience’s intelligence, trusting the kids’ wit in order to appreciate authentic, well-crafted stories, incorporating a uniquely British sensibility that resonates universally, and balancing visual comedy with smart writing in order to talk to viewers of any kind of age.

Looking ahead, Peter Lord has also revealed how Aardman Animations continues to adapt to the rapidly changing landscape of technology, including thinking about the potential of AI and digital innovation. While the studio values the human touch and craftsmanship deeply rooted in traditional stop-motion, it recognizes the importance of always studying and integrating new tools in order to stay relevant. And also, now opening its view with unique and unexpected collaborations with global brands and franchises, such as Pokémon and Star Wars, demonstrating its flexibility in contaminating its core artistry with diverse influences. As the industry evolves, Aardman Animations still remains committed to producing witty, inventive content that engage the audience and upholds the integrity of handmade animation: with an enduring legacy suggests that the essence of Aardman Animations, with its never-ending creativity and craftsmanship, will continue to inspire future generations of viewers and stop-motion animators.

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With “Bookends“, Mike Doyle returns to the Lovers Film Festival, where he previously presented Passing Through in 2023. Screened in the All the Lovers section, the new film marks a clear tonal shift while maintaining a thematic continuity rooted in identity, intimacy, and personal transformation.

Speaking with FRED Film Radio, Doyle acknowledges both the difference and the connection between his works. “This film is very different… and yet there is some connective tissue,” he notes, emphasising how the festival’s programming allows filmmakers to evolve without being confined to a single narrative voice. The return to Turin is described not as a reset, but as a continuation of a relationship with an audience he defines as attentive and emotionally engaged.

“Bookends” follows Nate, a young writer whose seemingly ideal life in New York collapses after a personal betrayal. Forced to leave the city, he seeks refuge in a rural retirement community where his grandparents live. What unfolds is a collision of generations that becomes both comic and deeply introspective.

The screenplay by Noam Ash offered Doyle an immediate emotional anchor, particularly in the relationship between Nate and his grandmother Miriam. The director highlights the importance of portraying older characters with nuance, avoiding clichés often associated with ageing on screen. “These were fully dimensional human beings,” he explains, underlining the intention to represent later stages of life as spaces of growth rather than closure.

The film’s title reflects its core structure: two generations acting as narrative “bookends,” each influencing the other. As Mike Doyle describes it, the older characters are closing chapters of their lives while simultaneously guiding Nate toward a new beginning. In turn, the younger generation brings fresh perspectives on communication, truth, and emotional openness.

Rather than fitting into a single genre, “Bookends” operates across multiple layers. It is a coming-of-age story that extends beyond youth, a family drama, and a love story that evolves in unexpected directions. This multiplicity, Mike Doyle suggests, was intrinsic to the script and essential to preserving its authenticity.

The film features a strong ensemble cast, including F. Murray Abraham, Caroline Aaron, Charlie Barnett, and Noam Ash himself. Mike Doyle, who began his career as an actor, approaches directing with a focus on fostering a cohesive, collaborative environment.

F. Murray Abraham, known for his Academy Award-winning performance in Amadeus, brought a profound depth to the character of Saul, including mastering Yiddish for the role. Mike Doyle describes his performance as grounded and unexpectedly layered. Caroline Aaron, on the other hand, infused Miriam with an energy and vitality that expanded the character beyond what was initially written.

Comedy, Mike Doyle notes, emerges not through exaggeration but through authenticity. The cast’s ability to “live” the humour rather than perform it allows the film to balance lightness with emotional resonance.

Working with Noam Ash also meant navigating the dual role of writer and actor. Mike Doyle emphasises the importance of allowing Ash to focus on performance during production, while still benefiting from his presence as a creative collaborator. This partnership proved crucial in adapting the script to practical challenges, demonstrating how independent filmmaking often relies on flexibility and shared problem-solving.

Although “Bookends“does not explicitly address current events, it resonates with a broader emotional climate marked by disconnection. Mike Doyle reflects on the film as an implicit response to the need for tenderness, listening, and human connection. “It tells the story, and hopefully that story has a ripple effect,” he says, suggesting that cinema can still influence how audiences relate to one another.

For Mike Doyle, film festivals remain central to this experience. In an era dominated by individual viewing habits, the collective environment of a screening becomes essential. The shared reactions of laughter and silence reinforce cinema’s ability to create communal understanding across differences in age, identity, and background.

The post “Bookends”, interview with the director Mike Doyle appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

Presented at the Lovers Film Festival, “The Activist” marks the fifth feature by Lithuanian filmmaker Romas Zabarauskas. Set in Kaunas, the country’s second-largest city, the film follows Andrius, a young man investigating the murder of his partner Deividas, an LGBTQ+ activist organising the city’s first Pride event.

What begins as a personal quest quickly expands into a broader political inquiry. Andrius infiltrates extremist groups connected to neo-Nazi networks, uncovering a web of hostility and institutional indifference. Romas Zabarauskas situates the narrative within a contemporary European context in which far-right ideologies are gaining visibility and influence.

While the film directly confronts extremist violence, its scope extends further. Zabarauskas deliberately critiques not only the far right but also the shortcomings of liberal institutions. “We have to look at what doesn’t work,” he explains, emphasising the importance of self-reflection within progressive movements.

The director frames the film as ultimately optimistic, reaffirming the value of democratic systems while acknowledging their fragility. Media, political structures, and law enforcement are depicted as necessary yet imperfect mechanisms that require active civic engagement to function effectively. This layered perspective avoids cynicism while maintaining a critical edge.

Andrius serves as an unconventional entry point into the narrative. Initially distant from activism and still grappling with his own identity, he stands in sharp contrast to his partner’s public commitment. This distance allows the character to evolve organically throughout the film.

“He starts in the closet and doesn’t support his boyfriend’s values,” Romas Zabarauskas notes. As the investigation progresses, Andrius confronts societal indifference and personal grief, gradually embracing the ideals he once resisted. This transformation is designed to resonate with audiences beyond activist circles, expanding the film’s emotional accessibility.

Drawing on the tradition of film noir, Romas Zabarauskas reinterprets the genre through a contemporary and queer perspective. He recalls how mid-20th-century crime melodramas, later defined as noir by French critics, reflected societal anxieties of the time, particularly around gender roles.

In “The Activist”, this framework is updated to explore fears surrounding LGBTQ+ visibility. The director introduces characters that occupy morally ambiguous positions, including queer figures who challenge conventional representation. “Queer people can be anything across the spectrum,” he states, rejecting reductive portrayals limited to victimhood or moral virtue.

Romas Zabarauskas positions his work against a tendency in arthouse cinema to adopt overtly educational tones when addressing queer themes. While acknowledging the value of films such as Milk, he advocates for a broader narrative range.

For him, true equality in representation lies in complexity. By allowing queer characters to be both protagonists and antagonists, “The Activist” embraces the diversity of human behaviour. This approach reflects the director’s personal experience, having publicly come out in Lithuania in 2011, when visibility remained limited.

Looking ahead, Romas Zabarauskas signals a shift in focus. While continuing to explore themes of power and relationships, his upcoming work may move beyond explicitly queer narratives. Among his current projects is a miniseries dedicated to Jonas Mekas, the influential Lithuanian filmmaker and co-founder of Anthology Film Archives.

Developed within the framework of a PhD at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, the project reflects a long-term commitment to cinematic history and experimentation. It also suggests an expansion of Zabarauskas’s artistic scope, bridging personal, political and historical dimensions.

The post “The Activist”, interview with director Romas Zabarauskas appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

Presented in the All the Lovers section of the Lovers Film Festival, “Another Man” marks a significant step in the artistic trajectory of David Moragas. The film centres on Marc and Eudald, a couple in their thirties whose long-term relationship appears stable yet increasingly hollow. Their life in Barcelona unfolds within a carefully constructed routine, one that begins to fracture with the arrival of a new neighbour, Carlos.

Moragas introduces the film as a story born out of fascination with observation. “I love spying on others,” he admits, framing voyeurism not as a mere act of curiosity but as a mechanism for self-interrogation. This impulse becomes the narrative engine of “Another Man”, in which looking outward serves to avoid confronting inner conflicts.

At the centre of the film lies Marc, an elusive and emotionally layered protagonist. David Moragas constructs him as a man shaped by repression, someone who appears composed and polite while harbouring internal tension. “From the outside, he looks kind… but inside there is a stream of violence,” the director explains.

This duality is embodied by the lead actor Lluís Marqués, a close collaborator of Moragas, whose ability to subtly convey discomfort and anger informed the character’s development. Marc’s journey is not defined by a single crisis but by a slow realisation of the consequences of emotional suppression, both for himself and those around him.

Rather than framing the narrative strictly as a love story, David Moragas situates the film within a broader existential and generational context. “We have a lot of freedom to choose, but that doesn’t mean we are free,” he reflects, pointing to the paradox of contemporary life.

The director highlights how personal choices are shaped by both internal judgment and external pressures, including political shifts such as the rise of conservative ideologies. This tension transforms “Another Man” into a portrait of a generation navigating the illusion of autonomy even as it confronts deep uncertainty about identity and purpose.

Carlos, the enigmatic neighbour, functions less as a traditional character and more as a symbolic projection. David Moragas deliberately avoids fully materialising him, maintaining a sense of distance that preserves the fluid nature of desire. “When you reach the object of desire, desire destroys itself,” he notes.

By keeping Carlos partially obscured, often seen through windows or across spaces, the film emphasises desire as a dynamic force rather than a consumable object. This approach prevents the narrative from reducing attraction to physical impulse, instead suggesting that desire may represent the possibility of an alternative life, another version of oneself.

Grief plays a crucial role in Marc’s psychological state. While the recent death of his mother is an explicit element, David Moragas introduces a more subtle layer: the mourning of a former self. The protagonist is forced to abandon an identity shaped by familial expectations, confronting the uncertainty of who he might become.

This transition aligns with the film’s exploration of adulthood. Moragas describes it as a shift between being a child and assuming a more responsible role, independent of parenthood. The pressures of building a future, making long-term decisions, and redefining relationships contribute to the film’s underlying tension.

The post “Another Man”, interview with director David Moragas appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

Presented in Berlinale Special Gala at the 76th Berlinale, The Blood Countess is the new film by German filmmaker and visual artist Ulrike Ottinger, who reinterprets the vampire myth as a sumptuous adventure tale with black humour. Isabelle Huppert plays the “Blood Countess”, a vampire for the first time in her career, hoping she will get to “bite more humans” in her future projects.   

For Isabelle Huppert, two months on set with Ulrike Ottinger was an experience unlike any other. “She’s a quite interesting person, very interesting to follow in her craziness, her dreams and her visions.” The construction of the character was defined from the very beginning by Ottinger’s work on costume, hair and makeup, which Huppert embraced fully. “I agreed with her vision and I knew that was really part of the construction of the character.” “The locations were like a secret language between all the actors,” she adds, “and the way she was filming them.”

The Blood Countess is a figure of another era, a noble woman from centuries past, displaced in the present, never quite rooted, always on the verge of leaving again. Huppert found her way into the character through pure intuition: the way she moves, the way she speaks, the particular quality of someone who carries the weight of history but inhabits the world lightly. “She’s not really rooted, she travels and she’s subject to leave again,” Huppert reflects. “All of this was never really conscious. It’s not that Ulrike and I sat down and decided. But at some point it necessarily infuses your construction of the character.”

What does the Blood Countess want? Isabelle Huppert resists easy answers. “She’s almost more like a messenger — she’s seeking for something,” she says. “Something that’s not really named in the film. A source of life. And by seeking something like this, she’s attracted to death at the same time.” It is this combination of the opposite sides of human experience, good and evil, life and death, the profound and the absurd, that draws Huppert to roles like this one. “It’s never one dimension of being evil or good. It’s always more mingled and questioning.”

Isabelle Huppert pushes back gently on the idea that this role was unusual for her because it demanded silence rather than psychology. “I speak all the time in the movie,” she laughs. And as for psychological roles — “I never really understood what it meant, because everybody has a psyche by definition.” What she found most attractive about working with Ottinger was precisely the lightness of it all. “She has this ability of being quite profound — you can imagine that it doesn’t come from nowhere — but it’s still a bit mysterious where it exactly comes from. And it’s very funny and very light.”

The post “The Blood Countess”, interview with actress Isabelle Huppert appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

Presented in the RealeNonReale section of the 39th Bolzano Film Festival Bozen, “Heart of Light — Eleven Songs for Fiji” is the latest work by filmmaker Cynthia Beatt, born in Jamaica and raised partly on Fiji, now based in Berlin for decades. The film had its world premiere at the 55th International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Featuring Tilda Swinton as Iona, a woman returning to her childhood home in Fiji, the film weaves together poetic narrative, ethnographic observation and essayistic fiction into a sort of traveling experience through the islands’ simultaneous dimensions:  past and present, colonial and post-colonial, personal and universal.

For Cynthia Beatt, the RealeNonReale section feels like a natural home. She has little patience for the rigid distinctions between fiction and documentary that govern most film funding applications, and the word “hybrid” doesn’t quite satisfy her either. “Essay,” she says, “encompasses a lot of what is interesting for me in cinema.” The section’s premise that everything is cinema and categories should have no limits  is one she has embodied throughout her career, from her 1979 debut “Description of an Island”, co-directed with Rudolf Thome, to this, her most ambitious work to date.

The film’s origins stretch back to 1985, when Cynthia Beatt first began researching a return to Fiji after making a film in Vanuatu. In 1986, she met Tilda Swinton at the Berlin premiere of “Caravaggio” and immediately began discussing her as the protagonist. For years the project developed — including a period with Wim Wenders’ production company Road Movies before Beatt realised she wanted something smaller and more intimate. “It went through a long marinating process,” she says. “If I’d made it then, it wouldn’t be what it is now.” Hurricanes destroyed locations, people died, and the film had to be constantly rethought, always with the generous help of Fijians who guided her when she needed to go a different way.

One of the most striking decisions in the film is the degree to which Tilda Swinton‘s role is stepped back to allow Fiji itself to take centre stage. “I became more and more clear that Fiji had to be the main character,” says Cynthia Beatt. “I didn’t want a white woman as the main character in a film about Fiji and Tilda understood that perfectly.” The film could not have been made without Fijian collaboration: an assistant cameraman, production assistants, and countless people who solved problems in what Beatt calls “the Fijian way” generously, communally, without fuss.

Cynthia Beatt herself is a woman of many homes, Jamaica, Fiji, Berlin and the film is in part an exploration on what it means to belong to a place. “Berlin is not my home, even though I live there,” she says. “But when I go back to Fiji, I feel like I’m coming home.” More deeply, the film is about confronting the limitations of the European mind, what Beatt calls the “superior gene” that Europeans carry, often unconsciously. “The more you understand that, the more interesting it becomes,” she says. Through the process of making the film, guided by Fijian generosity, she found herself growing more conscious of her own position as a European and distancing herself emotionally from imperialism and colonialism.

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Presented at the Industry Days of the 39th Bolzano Film Festival Bozen, MASO #3  – Short Film Training Programme has officially launched its third edition. Created by IDM Film & Music Commission Südtirol and the Bolzano Film Festival Bozen, with the support of the Cultural Offices of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano and a network of Italian and international partners, MASO is an intensive training programme that supports short film projects from development through to production. Nine teams of filmmakers, eighteen participants in total, will be selected to develop and produce their short films under the guidance of international experts. The call for entries for MASO #3 is open from today until 30 June 2026 on the IDM Film & Music Commission Südtirol website.

Zsuzsanna Király takes over the creative direction of MASO for its third edition,  bringing with her a wealth of experience in both production and workshop facilitation. She has followed the programme since its very beginning, witnessing how IDM and the festival built it at remarkable speed with fantastic partners, and how her predecessor , Enrico Vannucci, shaped its early identity. For Király, stepping into this role felt both natural and exciting. “A workshop like this is truly special in the short film making world,” she says, “because it combines development and production input for a creative team of producer, director and screenwriter — a well-rounded, cross-disciplinary attempt not just to give expert guidance but to strengthen the teams and the ideas.”

What Zsuzsanna Király most wants to bring to MASO #3 is something deceptively simple: space. Space for concentration, for communication, for each step of the filmmaking process to be properly developed before moving to the next. “What you didn’t fix in the script you cannot fix in the editing,” she says, invoking one of the most fundamental truths of filmmaking. Her goal is to slow things down in the best possible sense, in order to create an environment where ideas and teams can strengthen together in the early phases of development and pre-production, working with curiosity, humour and genuine interest in each other’s work.

MASO is structured as a team participation programme, and that structure is deeply intentional. Each participant knows about the work of all the other participants because, as Zsuzsanna Király puts it, “more brains know more, more hearts feel more.” Filmmaking, she insists, is a group effort that lives from shared experience. The programme is designed not only to produce films but to make the making of them a joyful, collaborative process, one in which the conversation between participants is as valuable as the guidance of the tutors.

Asked about the newest generation of filmmakers, Zsuzsanna Király is careful not to generalise. The field is too vast, the approaches too varied. What she observes is both a strong interest in experimentation, in the classic avant-garde sense and in the use of new media, and a continued passion for classic cinema. What matters most, she says, is not the style or the medium but the clarity and passion with which someone works, and the ability of a team to truly understand each other and develop an idea together.

The post Zsuzsanna Király, interview with the new creative director of MASO #3 at the 39th Bolzano Film Festival appeared first on Fred Film Radio.