FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Daily news and updates from the 76th Venice Film Festival, with Nicolò Comotti and Matt Micucci.

FRED’s Matt Micucci and Nicolò Comotti come to you with a brand new daily report from the 76th Venice International Film Festival. Films presented at this festival and discussed on this podcast include Sergei Loznitsa’s State Funeral, a Francesco Rosi-themed documentary called Citizen Rosi co-directed by her daughter Carolina, Oliver Hermanus’s return to the Lido with his brand new Moffie and more.

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PODCAST | Nicolò Comotti interviews Shahad Ameen, director of the film Scales.

Shahad Ameen tells the story behind the fascinating film Scales her first feature film which was selected for the 34th edition of the International Critics’ Week in Venice. A fantastic and dystopian tale that carries a courageous social and political message, Scales is a mature debut for Aamen, who is surely not afraid of creating challenging and ambitious cinema.

Scales: Set in a dystopian landscape, Scales is the story of a young strong-willed girl, Hayat, who lives in a poor fishing village governed by a dark tradition in which every family must give one daughter to the sea creatures who inhabit the waters nearby. In turn the sea creatures are hunted by the men of the village. Saved from this fate by her father, Hayat is considered a curse on the village and grows up an outcast. Nevertheless, she does not surrender to this fate and fights for a place within her village. After her mother gives birth to a baby boy, Hayat must accept the brutal custom of giving herself to the sea creatures or finding a way to escape.

The post Shahad Ameen – Scales #Venezia76 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Nicolò Comotti interviews Costa Gavras, director of the film Adults in the Room.

We had the pleasure to welcome the acclaimed director Costa Gavras in our Venice studios to have a chance to talk and know more about his latest film Adults in the Room, an astonishing rendition of what really went down between austerity-riddled Greece and the European bureaucrat-bots. Brilliantly written and with a commendable cast, Adults in the Room sheds a light to a chapter of contemporary European history that should never be repeated…and yet nothing has changed so far.

Adults in the Room: Behind closed doors, a human tragedy plays out. A universal theme: a story of people trapped in an inhuman network of power. The brutal circle of the Eurogroup meetings, who impose on Greece the dictatorship of austerity, where humanity and compassion are utterly disregarded. A claustrophobic trap with no way out, exerting pressures on the protagonists which finally divide them. A tragedy in the Ancient Greek sense: the characters are not good or evil, but driven by the consequences of their own conception of what it is right to do. A tragedy for our very modern time.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Roy Andersson, director of the film About Endlessness. 

An interview with Roy Andersson, whose film About Endlessness was presented in the competition of the 2019 Venice International Film Festival. This is a continuation of his previous work, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, which won the Golden Lion in Venice in 2014. Here, he returns to his reflections on existence in his now trademark style. He talks about this style which he has developed, his admiration of Albert Camus, his impulsiveness and more.

About Endlessness: A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendour and banality. We wander, dreamlike, gently guided by our Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments take on the same significance as historical events: a couple floats over a war-torn Cologne; on the way to a birthday party, a father stops to tie his daughter’s shoelaces in the pouring rain; teenage girls dance outside a café; a defeated army marches to a prisoner of war camp. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, Om det oändliga presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.

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PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi and Chiara Nicoletti host Gender Equality roundtable with Amy Darling (producer), Savina Neirotti (Head of Programme Biennale College Cinema and VR) and Marta Balaga (journalist – Cineuropa).

The roundtable focused on the issue of Gender Equality in festival and film industry; the pros and cons of pink quotas in festival selection, the education of the film exec on non discrimination and the equality of roles in the production and pre-production.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Gaspar Noé and Monica Bellucci, director and actress of the film Irréversible.

Noé talks to FRED about re-cutting the film because it needed restoration. Bellucci speaks about her experience around the original release and how it compares with 2019’s film.

Irréversible is a 2002 French experimental psychological thriller drama film, written and directed by Gaspar Noé and starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel. The film employs a reverse chronology and follows two men through the streets of Paris as they seek to avenge a brutally raped girlfriend. The film’s soundtrack was composed by Thomas Bangalter, one half of the electronic music duo Daft Punk.

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PODCAST | Daily news and updates from the 76th Venice Film Festival, with Matt Micucci and Nicolò Comotti.

FRED’s Matt Micucci and Nicolò Comotti come to you with the eighth daily report from Venezia 76. On this episode we talk about Atom Egoyan’s Guest of Honor, Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Atlantis, Luis Bunuel’s The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz from the Venice Classics section and more.

The post Daily 4th September – Day 8 #Venezia76 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

PODCAST | Nicolò Comotti interviews Alex Gibney, director of the film Citizen K.

Alex Gibney, the prolific documentary director, sits down with us to reveal his latest work: Citizen K. Centred around the figure of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the extremely wealthy Russian oligarch turned political exile and anti-Putin militant, Citizen K is an impressive document on how the wild wild East unravelled since the fall of the Soviet Union and through Putin it strives to return to its powerful, monolithic grandeur. Citizen K is out of competition in Venice 76.

Citizen K: In 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of the richest men in Russia, began a ten-year sentence for tax evasion. Many believed his downfall was challenging then newly elected president Vladimir Putin. During his time in a Siberian prison, Khodorkovsky became a world-famous dissident. Today, exiled in London, he continues to battle Putin’s 19-year hold on power. Exquisitely photographed in the UK, Russia and Germany, Citizen K examines power in Russia.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Benedict Andrews, director of the film Seberg.

We all remember Jean Seberg as a nouvelle vague american star who was a muse for Jean Luc Godard and who died of suicide in the late 70’s. With Seberg, out of competition at the 76th Venice International Film Festival, director Benedict Andrews tries to capture her essence through actress Kristen Stewart who shares with Seberg the link with French Cinema (Stewart has worked with Olivier Assayas in two movies and speaks French) and the fact that they both started acting very young. Andrews decided to portray a very particular moment in Jean Seberg’s life when she was put under sever control by the FBI (the agency was actually incriminated for pushing too hard in this matter) because of her activism and her “friendship” with civil rights associations and in particular The Black Panthers. Quoting Andrews and Stewart’s own words: “This film is a love letter to Jean Seberg so that people can finally see her for the brave woman she was and not only for her fragility and that famous haircut of hers”.

Seberg: Inspired by true events, the film tells the story of À bout de souffle (Breathless) star and darling of the French New Wave, Jean Seberg, who in the late 1960s was targeted by the illegal FBI surveillance program COINTELPRO. Seberg’s political and romantic involvement with civil rights activist Hakim Jamal made her a target of the FBI’s ruthless attempts to disrupt, discredit and expose the Black Power movement. An ambitious young FBI agent, Jack Solomon, is assigned to surveil her, only to find his fate dangerously interwoven with her own.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Andrey A. Tarkovsky, director of the film Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer. 

Andrey A. Tarkovsky directed a film about his father, the legendary Russian filmmaker of such revered films as The Mirrror, Solaris and Ivan’s Childhood, among others. Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer was presented in the Venice Classics section of the 2019 Venice International Film Festival. Here, Tarkovsky talks about the nature of this homage to his father, as well as his own earliest memory (which coincidentally is attached to being on his father’s set early in his life), plus the meaning of poetry in his own life, the significance of where the archive where all the material of the film came from and more.

Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer: The brilliant director Andrey Tarkovsky, whose works are considered masterpieces of world cinema, left us with eight films and an ever growing interest in and desire to understand his work. The documentary recounts Tarkovsky’s life and work, letting the director tell the story himself, as he shares with us his memories, his view of art and his reflections on the destiny of the artist and the meaning of human existence. Thanks to some extremely rare audio recordings, viewers are able to immerse themselves in the mysterious world of his cinematic imagery, allowing them to comprehend and reassess the work and inner life of the great director. The account is accompanied by never previously released recordings of poems by Arseny Tarkovsky, one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century and the director’s father, read by their author. Arseny’s poetry had always had an influence on Andrei’s movies, underlining the profound cultural and spiritual bond between father and son. The images of the film are made up of excerpts taken from the director’s works, rare contemporary photos and videos and sections shot in the places where Tarkovsky lived and made his movies, in Russia, Sweden and Italy, his adoptive home.

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