FRED Film Radio - English Channel

PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Olivier Assayas, president of the International Competition jury.

With just a few hours to go before the 70th Locarno Festival winners are announced, jury president Olivier Assayas tells us what Locarno represents in his view, compares his experience here with his jury experience in Cannes as well as his former job as a critic, and unveils some concrete details about the content of his mission – with fellow-jury members Miguel Gomes, Christos Konstantakopoulus, Jean-Stéphane Bron et Birgit Minichmayr – and about what his role means to him, underlining that it’s always all about pushing the limits.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Todd Haynes, director of Pardo D’Onore Manor.

His latest film Wonderstruck was the opening film of the 70th Festival de Cannes official competition and now Todd Haynes is not only at the 70th edition of Locarno Festival to receive the Pardo d’Onore Manor but he’s already working on two projects, one of those is a documentary on the band The Velvet Underground. Starting from Carol, Haynes began considering scripts and stories that he had not personally written and that has opened up a wider range of possibilities for him. The director of Far From Heaven describes his creative process, how he perceives and then works on the thin line between fiction and reality and his reaction to not being nominated for Best Director with Carol. When it comes to talk about Julianne Moore, he has only admiration and love for this great actress he already worked 4 times with, including the last film Wonderstruck.

The Locarno Festival offers tribute with the Pardo d’onore Manor to American director, screenwriter and producer Todd Haynes. At the 1991 Locarno Festival there were 19 movies contending for the top award of the Pardo d’oro – and one of them was Todd Haynes’ debut feature Poison. Made after a series of eye-catching shorts, the film, based on the novels of Jean Genet, set the keynotes of the director’s style. Filmmaking is not a propaganda tool for Haynes, but it can be instrumental in discovering, understanding and telling stories about reality. Frequently preoccupied with 1950s America and its violent morality, in subsequent years Haynes has directed Julianne Moore in Safe (1995), Far from Heaven (nominated for 4 Academy Awards in 2002) and Wonderstruck (2017), and Cate Blanchett in the episodic Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There (2007) and Carol (nominated for 6 Academy Awards in 2015).

Click here to go on the official page on the festival website.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas, directors of the film As Boas Maneiras.

Directors Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas are back on FRED to talk about their experience in Locarno and to leave their enthusiastic reaction t receiving the Special Jury Prize. Beside being excited for the award, Dutra and Rojas express their joy for how they got to interact with the audience and how good and strongly the film was received by the jury, the press and the people in Locarno.

As Boas Maneiras: for their second joint feature film collaboration, Brazilian directors Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas return to the horror genre they had already explored in 2011’s Trabalhar Cansa, using a similar jump-off point (a woman hiring a maid to help with the housework) only to then go in an unexpected, blood-drenched and thrilling direction with utmost confidence and determination. As Boas Maneiras (Good Manners) is a film whose duality (human vs. monster) is reflected in its twofold structure, before and after a crucial birth, with the split occurring fairly evenly halfway through the 135-minute running time. Adults and children alike give affecting performances as the difficulties of raising a young boy alone merge with the tropes of animalistic horror, specifically the werewolf subgenre. Expertly mixing suggestion and gore, with a laudable use of CGI that wouldn’t feel out of place in a big-budget Hollywood production, Dutra and Rojas deal with coming-of-age themes in a recognizable urban horror environment, showcasing a directorial maturity that fully justifies the award given to them by the Festival’s official jury. Walking the line between verisimilitude and full-blown supernatural madness, the duo sets a specific tone in the opening scenes and takes it all the way to the finish line, never once relenting in the name of “safe” filmmaking. It’s a new take on lycanthropy that is at once vaguely familiar and refreshingly surprising, with a final shot where sadness and exhilaration form a perfect marriage. Wherever they choose to go next, audiences and critics should follow with keen interest.

For the official page of the winning film on the festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Zoe Meng Jiang interviews Gürcan Keltek, director of the film Meteorlar.

Director Gürcan Keltek was born in İzmir, Turkey, in 1973. He studied film at Dokuz Eylül University before directing several shorts. Meteorlar is his first feature film. In this interview Gürcan talks about how he come up with the idea of conjuring up poetic images of wild goats hunting, war and meteorites.

Meteorlar: they come at night. Everyone steps out of their homes.They light torches and remember those who have walked these streets before them. In the next few hours, the city is on lockdown and an eclipse appears. At night, meteors start to fall. Blending documentary filmmaking and political commentary, and connecting the earthly to the cosmos, “Meteors” is a film about memory and disappearance – of people, places and things.

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Irina Trocan interviews Shevaun Mizrahi, director of the film Distant Constellations.

Director Shevaun Mizrahi talks to us about the enterprise of following her subjects – the inhabitants of a retirement home – throughout her documentary Distant Constellation, what is specifically Turkish on universal about her subject’s life stories and how the creative decisions behind it took shape.

Distant Constellations: several intertwined stories of a retirement home unfold before the camera, determining us to look into the past and connect to these strangers’ life stories.

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Bénédicte Prot interviews Pascal Greggory and Paul Hamy, director of the film 9 Fingers.

Two actors from the fantastically noir ensemble cast of this B&W movie – which breathlessly moves from Melville (Jean-Pierre) to Melville (Hermann) and takes us to a ghost vessel floating in time, on his way to Nowhereland, with a loot of polonium and Zeitgeist-infused words, feverishly inhabited by the many film and literature references that have always nourrished the radical work of poet, filmmaker, and punk rock musician Ossang – describe their characters and quote their favourite lines in this ‘spoken’, beautifully shot piece of art, accompanied by powerfully visceral sound work and music in 9 Fingers.

9 Fingers opens like in a film noir: at night, in a train station, a man called Magloire runs from a police control. With no luggage and no future. No sooner has he found a huge amount of money than trouble begins. A gang on his heels will soon make him a hostage then an accomplice. It is Kurtz’s gang. After an aborted break-in, they all have to flee aboard a cargo ship with a dangerous volatile freight. Nothing happens as it was supposed to be – poison and madness contaminate everybody. Kurtz’s men seem to be the pawns of a conspiracy led by the mysterious 9 Fingers…

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Jim McKay, director of the film En el septimo dia – On the seventh day

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti interviews Jim McKay who is at the 70th Locarno Festival in the international competition for the first time with En El Septimo Dia, his fifth feature film. The film focuses on a group of undocumented immigrants from Mexico whose everyday life is devoted to the hardest and tiring jobs available in Brooklyn, New York except for the 7th day, Sunday when they finally rest on the soccer fields. McKay comments on his choice of casting non-professional actors and how good they were in following his instructions and the script. Some of them want to pursue an acting career and we might meet them soon and welcome them on FRED.

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Irina Trocan interviews Ana Urushadze and Nata Murvanidze, director and actress of the film Scary Mother (Sashishi Deda).

Director Ana Urushadze and actress Nata Murvanidze discuss their first film collaboration and the director’s feature debut, Scary Mother. They reveal behind-the-scenes aspects of the shoot as well as how biography ties to the artistic process, for the character as well as for the film artists themselves.

Scary Mother (Sashishi Deda): a 50-year-old housewife, Manana, struggles with a dilemma: she has to choose between her family life and a love for writing she has repressed for years. When she finally decides to follow her passion, she is ready to sacrifice everything for it, mentally and physically.

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Travis Wilkerson, director of the film Did you wonder who fired the Gun?

Defined by Sight & Sound Magazine the “political conscience of 21st century American independent cinema,”Travis Wilkerson goes back directing a documentary feature, this time with a very personal film Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? in which he goes through a journey trying to uncover the events of the October 1946 in his hometown in Alabama where his great grand father killed Bill Spann, a black man without ever serving prison for the crime. After Sundance Film Festival, Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? is in the International Competition at the Locarno Festival , the 70th edition and this participation marks Wilkerson’s second time at the Festival after Machine Gun or Typewriter in 2015. Wilkerson describes his journey and reveals how he still feel ashamed for his family’s past without feeling relieved at all after going through this visually intense documentary trip.

Did you wonder who fired the Gun?: Alabama, 1946. S.E. Branch, a Southern racist and director Travis Wilkerson’s great-grandfather, murdered Bill Spann, a black man. The murder has become hidden family lore and when Wilkerson sets out to unravel the mystery, he encounters obstacle upon obstacle, destroyed records and everyone refusing to talk. He’s accused of bringing shame upon the family, shaking up old trouble nobody wants. Soon enough, his life will be threatened too.

For the official page of the film on the festival website, click here.

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PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Adrien Brody, actor who is at the 70th Locarno Festival to receive the Leopard Club Award.

Adrien Brody is the special guest of this year’s Locarno Festival. At the 70th edition of Switzerland’s most important cinematographic event of the summer, Brody receives the Leopard Club Award and participates in a conversation with artistic Director Carlo Chatrian with the press and selected audience. The Oscar Winner for Roman Polanski’s The Pianist talks about his life and career before and after this very important achievement and also comments on the vivacious kiss to Halle Berry during the ceremony. While recalling memories from the set of The Thin Red Line with Terrence Malick or Summer of Sam with Spike Lee, Adrien Brody describes his way of approaching a new character and how he totally becomes another person when acting in a film.

Leopard Club Award: in bestowing the Leopard Club Award on Adrien Brody, the 70th Locarno Festival will pay tribute to Academy Award-winning actor Adrien Brody, who will receive the 2017 Leopard Club Award. Brody gained a lasting place in the collective imagination of the movie-going public when he played composer Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist (2002), and has since demonstrated his status as one of the most versatile of actors, appreciated by filmmakers in Hollywood and beyond. Born in New York City and son of Sylvia Plachy, an artist and acclaimed photographer, and Elliot Brody, a retired history professor, Brody’s career’s starts with his role in the American sitcom Annie McGuire (1988). It is only after the film Bullet (1996) with Tupac Shakur and Mickey Rourke that his way to the top begins. After Eric Ross’ Restaurant (1998), The Thin Red Line (1998) by Terrence Malick and Summer of Sam (1999) by Spike Lee it came to no surprise that Roman Polanski’s The Pianist brought him the Academy Award for Best Actor only at the age of 29. Brody’s interpretation of the pianist and composer Wladyslaw Szpilman strikes for its poetic, powerful and tragic nature, very common features among the roles he played. The actor has since contributed to the success of many films by well-known directors such as Wes Anderson, Peter Jackson or Woody Allen. Because of his multifaceted talent, the title actor doesn’t suit Brody, but finds a better definition in the word “artist”. His presence on the stage fascinates with roles like the ventriloquist Steven Schoichet in Dummy (2003), for which Adrien Brody learned the art of ventriloquism. In order to completely dive into the role of the pianist, the actor gave up all of his possessions and dedicated himself to learning Chopin’s pieces. Not only a director for films such as for the documentary Stone Barn Castel (2015) and being part of many short films, like most recent Come Together: A Fashion Picture in Motion (2016) by Wes Anderson, Brody is also a painter.

For the official page of the event on the festival website, click here.

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