FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Joel Edgerton, actor of the film Master Gardener.

An interview with Joel Edgerton, lead actor in Paul Schrader’s new film, Master Gardener. The film was presented out of competition at the 79th Venice Film Festival, where the filmmaker also received a career achievement award. In this interview, Edgerton talks about working with Schrader and the things he admires about his movies, as well as the character he portrays in Master Gardener, finding a way to accept and forgive his difficult past.

Master Gardener: Narvel Roth is the meticulous horticulturist of Gracewood Gardens. He is as much devoted to tending the grounds of this beautiful and historic estate, as pandering to his employer, the wealthy dowager Mrs. Norma Haverhill. When Mrs. Haverhill demands that he take on her wayward and troubled great-niece Maya as a new apprentice, chaos enters Narvel’s spartan existence.

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PODCAST | Simone Soranna interviews Sébastien Lifshitz, director of the documentary Casa Susanna.

Sébastien Lifshitz tells us how he discovered the story of Casa Susanna and hot it was important for him to try to make a movie about that.

Casa Susanna: In the ‘50s and ‘60s, deep in the American countryside at the foot of the Catskills, a small wooden house with a barn behind it was home to the first clandestine network of cross-dressers. Diane and Kate are now 80 years old. At the time, they were men and part of this secret organization. Today, they relate this forgotten but essential chapter of the early days of trans-identity in this film. It is a story full of noise and fury, rich in extraordinary characters, including the famous Susanna, who had the courage to create this refuge that came to be known as Casa Susanna.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Cate Blanchett and Todd Field, actress and director of the film Tár.

Even though she feels like a real person, the Lydia Tár whose biography it is depicted in TÁR by Todd Field, in competition at the Venice International Film Festival, doesn’t exist. The character masterfully played by Cate Blanchett is only based on real, existing people. Cate Blanchett and Todd Field started in 2020 to build Lydia Tar, first-ever female chief conductor of a major German orchestra, from scratch. They developed her story as a fierce “Maestro” until she became almost independent, alive. Is she aware is aware of the way she acts in the world and insinuates her presence into other people’s lives? Cate Blanchett thinks she’s not, as she’s as human as we are. The actress adds that she never judged Lydia, her toxic behaviors or her virtues as that she never judges her characters.

Tár: Set in the international world of classical music, TÁR centres on the first-ever female chief conductor of a major German orchestra.

To discover more about the film, click here.

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PODCAST | David Martos interviews Michal Vinik, director of the film Valeria is getting married.

Michal Vinik, director of Valeria is getting married – selected by Orizzonti Extra in the 79th edition of Venice Film Festival- talks to FRED about the struggle of female directors trying to finance their new productions. She also talks about the idea of telling the story of Valeria, a woman born in Ukraine that travels to Israel in order to wed a man she had never met before.

Valeria is getting married: Christina is a Ukrainian woman who moved to Israel through a ‘bride-to-order’ kind of deal. Compared to her life back in Ukraine, life in Israel is great for Christina. She works in a beauty salon, earns her own money, and loves Israel. Her Israeli husband Michael is also satisfied with this marriage. He is happy that he found a woman who can live with him. In fact, he is so satisfied that he starts his own little business scouting for Ukrainian brides for other Israeli men. Michael’s recent matchmaking is a special one—the bride’s name is Valeria, and she’s Christina’s younger sister. Michael went out of his way and found the best man he could get for her. His name is Eitan, and while he may not be the most handsome guy in the country, he is a good-hearted, generous man. However, Valeria is different to her older sister. And the whole delicate balance is at risk.

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PODCAST | David Martos interviews Steve James, director of the film A compassionate spy.

Steve James, director of the documentary A compassionate spy, out of competition in Venice Film Festival, talks to FRED about how he discovered the story of Ted Hall. He was a young scientist hired to work in the Manhattan Project that began to leak classified information about nuclear weapons to Russia. The film leans on the testimony of Ted Hall’s widow, Joan, and some TV material found by the production team

A compassionate spy: Recruited in 1944 as an 18-year-old Harvard undergraduate to be the youngest physicist on the Manhattan Project, to create a bomb before the Germans did, Ted Hall didn’t share his colleagues’ elation after the successful detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb. Increasingly concerned during 1944—with Germany clearly losing the war—that a U.S. post-war monopoly on such a powerful weapon after the war could lead to nuclear catastrophe, he decided beginning that October to start passing key information about the bomb’s construction to the Soviet Union. After the war, at the University of Chicago, he met and married Joan, a fellow student with whom he shared a passion for classical music and socialist causes — and the explosive secret of his espionage. Living under a cloud of suspicion and years of FBI surveillance and intimidation, the pair raised a family while Ted refocused his scientific brilliance on groundbreaking bio-physics research. A Compassionate Spy reveals the twists and turns of this real-life spy story, and the couple’s remarkable love and life together during more than 50 years of marriage.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Abel Ferrara, director of the film Padre Pio.

Abel Ferrara talks about his latest film, Padre Pio. The film was presented at the Giornate degli Autori, the parallel and independent section of the 79th Venice Film Festival. Aside from speaking about the film and the events it portrays, including the too little talked about massacre at San Giovanni Rotondo of 1920, Ferrara talks about his own spirituality and talks about casting Shia LeBeouf in the role of Padre Pio because he felt the actor was undergoing a similarly profound awakening of his own.

Padre Pio: It is the end of World War I and the young Italian soldiers are making their way back to San Giovanni Rotondo, a land of poverty, with a tradition of violence and submission to the iron-clad rule of the church and its wealthy landowners. Families are desperate, the men are broken, albeit victorious. Padre Pio also arrives, at a remote Capuchin monastery, to begin his ministry, evoking an aura of charisma, saintliness and epic visions of Jesus, Mary and the Devil himself. The eve of the first free elections in Italy sets the stage for a massacre with a metaphorical dimension: an apocalyptic event that changes the course of history.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Georgia Oakley and Rosy McEwen, director and actress of the film Blue Jean.

Director Georgia Oakley and actress Rosy McEwen talk about Blue Jean, a film presented in the program of the Giornate degli Autori, the parallel and independent strand of the 79th Venice Film Festival. Together, they talk about revisiting the late ’80s, during which Thatcher’s government passed a law stereotyping lesbians and gays as paedophiles. They also talk about the intimacy of the story, drawing inspiration from movies of the past and whether they believe that cinema and art can still counter lawful oppression.

Blue Jean: It’s 1988. Thatcher’s government have just passed a law that stereotypes lesbians and gays as paedophiles, recruiting children for their ‘deviant’ lifestyles. Female PE teachers are prime targets for homophobic accusations, and as a result, Jean is forced to lead a double life. During the week she’s a respected member of staff; on the weekend she slips surreptitiously into Newcastle’s gay scene with her girlfriend Viv. But when she’s confronted by one of her students in a lesbian bar, Jean is pushed to extreme lengths to save her job and her sanity.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Cecilia Maniucchi, director of the film Worlds Apart.

An interview with Cecilia Maniucchi, director of Worlds Apart. The film was presented as a special event of the Giornate degli Autori, the parallel and independent section of the 79th Venice Film Festival. Maniucchi talks with us about representing and working during the time of the pandemic, which also prompted her to experiment with alternative ways of filmmaking and shooting. She also talks about working with an amazing cast ensemble, featuring Bob Odenkirk, Radha Mitchell and Danny Houston, among others.

Worlds Apart: Three couples of friends are forced to stay each in their own home, due to the unexpected lockdown in Los Angeles. Jonathan has an art gallery and lives with his wife Sue, but he has a mistress, Clarissa, whom he cannot see. Instead, she lives alone, next to her Iranian tenant Darius and with few people she hears on the phone, including her ex-professor and dear friend Paul who is married to Rita, a much younger woman and very different from him. Forced isolation will lead everyone to re-evaluate their relationships with the people they live with, with those with whom they would like to be and in the end with themselves.

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PODCAST | David Martos interviews Oliver Hermanus, director of the film Living.

After premiering the film in Sundance, Oliver Hermanus brings his new film –Living– to the Lido. It’s an adaptation of Kurosawa’s ‘Ikiru’ by Nobel Prize Kazuo Ishiguro that translates the story into the life of a grey bureaucrat in 1953 London [Bill Nighy], that decides to savor life after being diagnosticated with a terminal illness.

Living is the story of an ordinary man, reduced by years of oppressive office routine to a shadow existence, who at the eleventh hour makes a supreme effort to turn his dull life into something wonderful—into one he can say has been lived to the full.

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PODCAST | Matt Micucci presents Big FRED Venice, FRED Film Radio’s daily and live-streamed show from the 79th Venice Film Festival.

Matt Micucci presents Big FRED Venice, FRED Film Radio’s daily and live-streamed show from the 79th Venice Film Festival. In this third episode, Matt is all alone and tries his best to cover some of the major films recently screened at the lido. Among them, Todd Field’s Tár, starring Cate Blanchett, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Bardo.

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