FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Abdelhamid Bouchnak, director of the film Dachra.

Director Abdelhamid Bouchnak’s feature Dachra premiered as the closing film of the 75th Venice Film Festival’s International Critics Week strand. In this interview he talks about working within the genre movie, or as he calls it, “elevated genre”, the true stories that inspired Dachra and the style of the movie, especially the use of handheld camera. In addition, Bouchnak also mentions his Tunisian identity as a distinctive feature of his filmmaking.

Dachra: Yasmin, a Tunisian journalism student, and her two male friends set out on a university assignment to solve the cold case of Mongia, a woman found mutilated 25 years ago, now imprisoned in an asylum and suspected of witchcraft. As they pursue their investigation, the three friends stumble into the archaic and ominous world of Dachra, an isolated countryside compound filled with goats, silent women, mysterious drying meat and steaming pots. They are welcomed to stay overnight by the jovial yet menacing cult leader, but when Yasmin discovers Dachra’s secrets, she must escape before she is consumed.

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PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Emre Yeksan, director of the film Yuva.

Director Emre Yeksan gives us a film of passion and pain, a tour de force for the main actor in this naturalistic and almost animal performance and some food for thoughts about how progress can be too often dangerous and violent towards nature. His experience with the Biennale College Cinema programme was hectic and stressful but very rewarding, indeed.

Yuva: Veysel’s wild solitary life in the woods is disrupted when the land he inhabits is sold to investors. One day, his younger brother Hasan comes from the city to convince him to leave. As the imminent threat of the eviction rapidly grows, the belated confrontation of the two brothers leads to the discovery of a magical home: a universe under the earth.

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PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Amir Naderi and Monk Serrell-Freed, director and actor of the film Magic Lantern.

Amir Naderi loves to find new actors and faces and with Magic Lantern he did it again. Thanks to leading actor Monk Serrell-Freed, he tells us the story of a missing love, a mysterious girl and the never ending love he has for cinema.

Magic Lantern: Mitch is a 22 year-old projectionist who is loading the last film for the final screening at a small theatre that is about to be converted into a digital cineplex. He dreads loading this last film reel into the projector because he knows it will drag him into yet another desperate search for love now lost. He gazes through the small projection window, onto the flickering light of the screen and then somehow farther, into another world; a world that is his and his alone. He sees another version of himself on the screen, where he works at a small, fading thrift shop. He leads a lonely existence, with only his curmudgeonly boss and the store’s mannequins for company. This monotonous life is broken by the arrival of a beautiful, otherworldly young girl in search of the perfect hat. She and Mitch share a brief and inexpressible moment of connection, interrupted by a phone call that drags her away. When Mitch tries to follow her, she has vanished. All that remains is her cell phone on the sidewalk, which seems to call out to him. Mitch picks it up and embarks on a journey of love and obsession that takes him through dream, reality and cinema as he struggles to find the mysterious girl.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Tory Kittles and Michael Jai White, actors of the film Dragged Across Concrete.

An interview with Tory Kittles and Michael Jai White, actors in Dragged Across Concrete, presented out of competition at the 75th Venice Film Festival. The film marks the return of filmmker S. Craig Zahler to the oldest and most prestigious film festival, and the actors talk about working with him along with their connection to the characters they play in the movie and the chemistry they share in those moments that you wouldn’t normally see in a contemporary genre movie, and that are the moments that Zahler is becoming known for.

Dragged Across Concrete: Two police detectives find themselves suspended when a video of their strong-arm tactics is leaked to the media. With little money and no options, the embittered policemen descend into the criminal underworld and find more than they wanted waiting in the shadows.

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PODCAST| Angelo Acerbi interviews Helga Trupel, Vice President of the Commission for Culture and Education of the EU.

Helga Trupel, Vice President of the Commission for Culture of the European Commission, talks with us about the essential issue of the regulation of copyright for authors and writers of films or tv productions in Europe and the issue of streaming and vod platform. The law was to be discussed on September,11th and it was regulated on time before the stop of legislative activities for the European elections. She explains why this issue needed to be solved urgently.

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PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Ivan Salatic, director of the film You Have the Night.

Director Ivan Salatic talks about You Have the Night, his feature film debut, which was featured on the program of the International Film Critics Week of the 75th Venice Film Festival. The director talks about the story, its inspiration, the Montenegrin dimension of the film, the use of archive footage and more.

You Have the Night: After leaving the ship on which she works, Sanja finds herself stranded, with nowhere to go but home. The shipyard has filed for bankruptcy, leaving many workers out of work. Boats covered with tarpaulin are scattered around the landscape, set aside for better days. A storm comes; one life is lost. Luka is waiting for the night in the woods. The night when everything could change.

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PODCAST| David Martos interviews Nick Hamm, Jason Sudeikis, Lee Pace, director and actors of the film Driven.

We talked about the life of John DeLorean and how the events related to his conviction interested the director in order to make his film. We discussed also the shooting in Puerto Rico, just some days after Hurricane María hit the island.

Driven: Jim Hoffman (Jason Sudeikis) is your average family man—father of two, hard-working pilot, doting husband to Ellen (Judy Greer). Oh, he’s also an occasional drug smuggler. And when Jim is caught using his family vacation to smuggle cocaine into the US, ambitious FBI agent Benedict J. Tisa (Corey Stoll) sees an opportunity to earn a major victory for the Bureau by using Jim to entrap his elusive supplier. Starting over in an affluent San Diego neighbourhood on the government’s payroll, Jim’s duties as a confidential informant get side-tracked when he befriends his famous neighbour, motoring engineer and designer John DeLorean (Lee Pace).

For the page of the film on the Festival website, click here.

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PODCAST| David Martos interviews Sergei Loznitsa, director of the film Process.

We discussed with the director the difficulties of composing a film only with archive materials and the possible connections between the Stalinist regime depicted in the documentary film and nowadays Russia.

Process: Moscow, USSR. 1930. A group of top rank economists and engineers is put on trial accused of plotting a coup d’etat against the Soviet government. It’s alleged that they made a secret pact with the French Prime Minister, Raymond Poincare, and with other Western political leaders, aiming to destroy the Soviet power, restore capitalism and break up the USSR. All charges are fabricated and the accused are forced to confess to the crimes they never committed. Unique archive footage reconstructs one of the first show trials, masterminded by Stalin, which unfolds as a theatrical performance with actors – prosecutors, witnesses, defendants, judges – lying to themselves, to the audience and to the world.

For the page of the film on the Festival website, click here.

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PODCAST| David Martos interviews Jennifer Kent, director of the film The Nightingale.

We talk to Jennifer Kent about being the only female director in competition in Venice and about the imposition of quotas in any festival line-up. The main topic in the interview is violence and it is reflected in The Nightingale.

The Nightingale: Set in 1825, Clare, a young Irish convict woman, chases a British officer through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. On the way she enlists the services of an Aboriginal tracker named Billy, who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.

For the page of the film on the Festival website, click here.

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PODCAST| Nicolò Comotti interviews Ivan Ayr, Kimsi Singh and Saloni Batra, director, actress and producer of the film Soni.

Ivan Ayr, Kimsi Singh and Saloni Batra talk about their work together for the film Soni, competing here in Venice in the Orizzonti section.

Soni, a young policewoman in Delhi, and her superintendent Kalpana have collectively taken on the growing crisis of violent crimes against women. However, their alliance suffers a major setback when Soni is transferred out for alleged misconduct on duty. Soni’s professional life is further strained by certain developments in her personal life, when she is forced to deal with the sudden arrival of her estranged husband.

To know more about the film, click here.

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