FRED Film Radio - English Channel

Igor Drljaca – director – The Waiting Room

Igor Drljaca tells a story of an expat form Sarajevo to Canada, an actor formerly famous in his country who is still looking for his place in the world.

The lead actor is an actual expatriate, and a lot of his personal life poured into the film, with replicas of events he actually lived paired with fictional ones. The director perfectly depicts this empty space, this “waiting room” in the life of the lead character where nothing ever happens, even if it should.

THE WAITING ROOM: Jasmin, who was once a successful actor in the former Yugoslavia, lives in Toronto after having left Sarajevo to escape from the civil war. He works as a bricklayer, barely making ends meet, and juggles auditions and tryouts in the attempt to relaunch his career. He is cast in a role which brings back memories of painful events he had never gotten over and has to face reality once and for all, making his peace with a past that still weighs down on him.

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Ross Partridge / Jennifer Lafleur – director / actress – Lamb

Ross Patridge tells us a strange friendship, an unsettling relationship, pure but bumpy, a meeting of two lonely souls that have an enourmous age gap between them; this could keep them apart , but instead it brings them together. It was a difficult and dangerous path the one Ross Patridge chose to take, but the risk was worth taking.

The question is: if the roles were reversed, if it was a mature woman and a young boy, would have all been so challenged by the film? Jennifer Lafleur tells her thoughts about this…and we could not agree more. have a listen…

LAMB: The life of David Lamb is in shambles: shortly after his divorce, he also had to face his father’s death. When everything seems lost, he meets Tommie in a parking lot: an eleven-year-old girl, somewhat of an awkward loner. And everything changes: feeling the urge to finally do something positive, David sets off with the girl in a journey toward the Rocky Mountains. Surrounded by wilderness and breathtaking landscapes, the unlikely pair gets to know each other as their lives slowly open up to one another.

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Marko Skop – director – Eva Nova

Two years ago Marko Skop participated with his film project EVA NOVA to the Torino Film Lab where he developed the script and made a lot of interesting and remarkable connections. Skop is back in Turin, at the Torino Film Festival to share with the audience and with FRED his experience and to introduce us to EVA NOVA.

EVA NOVA: Eva Nová is a sixty-two-year-old woman fighting to stay sober and living off the memories of her glory days as a famous actress during the communist era. She left her son Dodo with her sister Manka when he was just a boy; he is now a grown man who lives in the countryside with his wife, children, and ailing aunt. Eva goes to visit her son and his family and will do anything to make up for all the lost time.

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Viola Gabrielli – project manager – KIDS Regio

Viola Gabrielli from KIDS Regio tells us about the various actions that can be undertaken for promoting and developing the production of films for kids; one of the aims of KIDS Regio is also to balance within the European territory the quantity of such movies, implying that the importance, both educational and economical, of this compartment of the film industry is crucial.

Viola Gabrielli was guest of the Piemonte Day, a day of workshops also organised by Media, that took place at the Film Commission Torino Piemonte during the 33rd Torino Film Festival.

KIDS REGIO: KIDS Regio presents a lobby initiative for producers and distributers of high quality and multi-faceted European Children’s Films.

Thus, the initiative supports the professionals who work in film for children & youth and forms a platform to strengthen existing networks, (to discuss new synergies) and define solutions to improve the status, transfer and variety of European productions, co-productions & distributions for children and youth.

KIDS Regio particularly supports original live-action feature films for children, which offer children a wide variety of stories, genres and styles.

KIDS Regio is the brainchild of Cine Regio, the Network of regional film funding institutions and is supported by the Central German Regional Film Fund (Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, MDM) and the Thuringian state Chancellery (Thüringer Staatskanzlei ).

KIDS Regio as a project is imbedded in the German Children’s Media Foundation GOLDEN SPARROW.

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Terence Davies – director – Sunset Song

Terence Davies is one of great living European directors. His new film SUNSET SONG is a confirmation of his talent, his views and his craftmanship. In this movie, he sticks with his style and his passion for telling about the past, either his own or not. Talking to him, we’ll find out why modern times have no appeal on him, or almost none.

SUNSET SONG: Scotland, early 20th century. The Guthrie family falls apart when their mother dies. The young children are sent to live with their aunt and uncle, while adolescent Chris stays with her brother and father to work on the farm. The two men have a stormy relationship and the brother soon emigrates to Argentina, leaving the weight of running the farm on the girl’s shoulders. When her father dies, Chris decides that her bond with the land is too strong to search for a job in the city. So she marries a farmer, Ewan Tavendale, and has a child with him. But her re-found happiness is shattered when the war breaks out.

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Hany Abu-Assad – director – The Idol

After being nominated for an Oscar twice (Paradise Now and Omar), winning a Golden Globe (Paradise Now) and a Jury prize in the Un Certain Regarad Section of Festival de Cannes (Omar, 2013) director Hany Abu- Assad decided to embark in a new project, different from his previous films, a film written for the big audience with a great hope for a connection.

This is why THE IDOL was born. At the Torino Film Festival, after Toronto and London, the film is based on the amazing true story of Mohammed Assaf, a palestinian refugee from Gaza who, in 2013, won the popular talent show ARAB IDOL.

While telling a great and real story, the film also deals and describes the big responsability that this young man must have carried upon his shoulder since he represented and still represents HOPE for his country.

THE IDOL: Young Mohammad Assaf lives in Gaza with his sister Farrah, who shares his dream of singing one day at the Cairo opera. When Farrah is admitted to hospital for kidney failure, Mohammad promises the girl he will make their dream come true. For the aspiring singer, this is the beginning of a journey in Egypt that will take him to the 2013 edition of the talent show Arab Idol.

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Corin Hardy – director – The Hallow

Corin Hardy, who has been defined by Screen International as “the star of tomorrow”, is in Turin at the 33rd edition of the Torino Film Festival as a juror of the main competition and as the director of his first film THE HALLOW, which he presented in the After Hour section.

Since he was a kid, Hardy has always been fascinated by monsters and their human insight so when he finally got the chance of portraying and creating, he gave them something that can be felt like a soul, a reason (though despicable) to behave badly.

The monsters of THE HALLOW want to restore their euilibrium, they would even want a community, a family somehow. The film also deals with the horrific thought of not being able to trust our own instict. Corin Hardy calls even into question the maternal instict.

THE HALLOW: An environmental conservationist from London moves to Ireland with his wife and infant son to patrol a stretch of forest, which local superstition considers hallowed ground. His presence inevitably stirs up a series of demonic creatures that do not like to be disturbed and have no intention of leaving their home.

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Craig Roberts – director – Just Jim

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti meets Craig Roberts in Turin to present his directorial’s debut JUST JIM, a coming of age story exploring the theme of the double.

The constant fight, typical of adolescence, between who we think we should be and who we really are is the focus of the story and Roberts develops it by introducing a sort of Jim’s alter ego, american, cool and successful Dean, played by Emile Hirsch.

JUST JIM: Jim doesn’t fit in at his school. Shortly after his only friend abandoned him, his dog also ran away, leaving him all alone. Everything changes when Dean moves in next door: a mysterious American guy who seems to have come straight out of a movie. The two become friends and Dean helps Jim look cool and finally become popular at school. But everything comes at a price, and Jim has to manage his new life as well as the challenges of keeping Dean’s secret.

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Daniel Dencik – director – Gold Coast

Daniel Dencik crafts a visually beautiful and poignant film about one of the less known pages of Danish colonial history, with the help of the original letters of Frederick Wulff, Danish officer and botanist who was sent by the king to Guinea to follow the development of a coffe plantation on the Gold Coast. Based on these real words, the film develops an intense storyline with an attentive and precise aesthetics, that gives it an additional intriguing quality.

GOLD COAST: In 1836, the king of Denmark orders the botanist Wulff to set sail for the Gold Coast in equatorial Africa, where a Danish colonial camp is located. The mission’s goal is to establish a number of plantations there. What he leaves behind at home is the great love of his live; what awaits him is the unknown.

To Wulff, a scientist who looks at nature in a visionary way, it is the beginning of an adventure with unexpected and dramatic consequences, in which he will clash with the local populations, threatened by the slave trade, but also the conspiracies and the plotting that act in the shadow of power.

Gold Coast Trailer from Haslund / Dencik Entertainment on Vimeo.

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Henri Steinmetz – director – We Are Fine

Using his background as a painter and an artist, Henri Steinmetz gives us a film of sheer beauty and glamorous looks, with seven episodes that involve the daily life of a gourp of kids, four boys and a girl, who spend the summer together as a family, kind of disfunctional one actually. A dream-like film, with no references and connections with contemporary reality but sensually involving and mesmerizing.

WE ARE FINE: The lives of Tubbie, Tim, Jojo, Birdie, and Marie took an unexpected twist, as if their summer vacation never ended. The five youths are a tightknit group of friends, wandering around like stray dogs in an anonymous city that pays them no heed, experiencing moments of unexpected bliss in the suffocating heat of an endless summer. But soon this game of hide-and-seek with reality, this escape from the world will start revealing its consequences, undermining the group’s unity.

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