In this episode of Stream Close Up, we continue our coverage of the 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival with Czech writer and director Šimon Holý.

Šimon joins us to discuss his new film Chica Checa, which had its world premiere in the festival’s main competition. The film follows a woman working in a small-town post office whose dying mother has one final wish: to see a beloved Czech pop icon perform. To make that happen, she calls her son home from France, only to discover that the life he has built for himself is very different from the one she imagined.

What begins as a mission to fulfill a grandmother’s last wish becomes something warmer and more surprising: a mother and son story about rediscovery, drag performance, small-town attitudes, and the possibility of starting again later in life.

Šimon talks about the dream that sparked the idea, the personal connections behind the story, and why he sees the film as both humanistic and quietly political in the current Czech context.

We also discuss working with Paula Tomašovová, casting the mother-son relationship, finding humor without falling into cliché, and why Chica Checa is, in Šimon’s words, almost like an eighties buddy movie.

Topics include:

Šimon Holý’s return to Karlovy Vary

The world premiere of Chica Checa

Drag performance and Czech pop culture

Mother-son relationships on screen

Coming out, family, and the pain of not being known

Casting Paula Tomašovová and Jan Cina

Camp, humor, and avoiding cliché

The political context of contemporary Czech cinema

Hope, change, and starting over after fifty

Trailer: Chica Cheka

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Swiss director Jan-Erik Mack joins Stream Close Up to discuss his new feature film A Happy Family, which premieres at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival as part of the Crystal Globe competition.

The film follows Niki, a single mother working two jobs while trying to keep her family afloat. After an accident brings her into conflict with the authorities, her life begins to spiral as she fights to remain close to her children. Mack describes the film as a story about Switzerland’s working poor, a reality that became more visible during the pandemic when food queues appeared in a country often associated with wealth and stability.

In this conversation, Mack reflects on his path from graphic design to filmmaking, his time at the University of the Arts in Zurich. We also discuss his acclaimed short film Facing Mecca, which won numerous awards and was shortlisted for an Oscar. Mack explains how that success opened the door to television work, including his first series as a co-director and later work on Wilder.

The conversation also explores Mack’s continuing creative partnership with Anna Schinz. She co-wrote Facing Mecca, appeared in Davos 1917, and now co-writes and stars in A Happy Family. Together, Mack and Schinz use an intimate family story to explore poverty, bureaucracy, parenthood, and the limits of institutional care.

We also get into visual storytelling, working with children, the contrast between urban Zurich and the Swiss countryside, and how A Happy Family balances political reality with empathy for everyone caught inside the system.

Trailer: A Happy Family

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In this episode, Brian speaks with Danish filmmaker Mads Mengel about his feature debut The Guest, a tightly controlled family drama built around a deceptively simple event, a naming ceremony for a young couple’s new son. What begins as a celebration soon becomes something much more fragile when Carl’s estranged mother arrives unexpectedly, forcing the family to confront old pain, broken trust and the possibility of reconciliation.

Mads traces the long road to the film, from his childhood discovery that movies were something people actually made, through years of rejection before entering the Danish Film School. He reflects on the privilege of working in a country with strong public support for film, and how his own experience of becoming a father shaped the final version of the story.

The conversation also digs into the film’s remarkable cast. Mads talks about writing the role of Carl with Simon Bennebjerg in mind, discovering Josephine Park through his television work, and building a sibling dynamic that feels lived in rather than explained. He also discusses the importance of collaboration, improvisation and trusting actors to bring small details into the film, including one of the episode’s best anecdotes involving a dog that became part of the character’s emotional life.

At the center of the discussion is the film’s refusal to make things simple. Mads describes wanting the story to exist in “one big pile of grey,” where no character is reduced to a villain or victim. The result is a drama about family, mental illness, generational trauma and the uneasy question of when love becomes responsibility, and when responsibility becomes too much to carry.

“It has to have all of it, and then none of it. It has to be one big pile of grey.” - Mads Mengel

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In this episode of Stream Close Up, Brian speaks with Ukrainian filmmaker Roman Liubyi about his latest film, Time Machine Maidan.

Roman is part of the filmmaking collective Babylon’13, which came together during the first days of the Maidan Revolution in 2013. What began as an urgent effort to film, subtitle, and share short videos from inside the protest movement has grown into a larger cinematic archive of modern Ukrainian history.

Time Machine Maidan draws on that archive in a strikingly original way. The film imagines a young soldier from today’s battlefield traveling back ten years to the beginning of the Revolution of Dignity. Using archival footage, voiceover, and experimental visual transitions, Roman and his collaborators turn documentary material into something closer to a time travel story, a memory piece, and a work of political cinema all at once.

The conversation explores how the film was shaped by the tenth anniversary of Maidan, the desire to create something Roman could one day show his daughter, and the challenge of making a film about history while that history is still violently unfolding. Roman discusses the role of Babylon’13, the artistic tension behind the film’s structure, the use of new visual technology on decade-old footage, and why he sees Maidan and the current war as part of the same struggle.

They also talk about the personal side of revolution: love stories born during moments of upheaval, the strange sense of community that existed on Maidan, and the responsibility Ukrainian filmmakers feel as they continue to create while living through war.

A powerful conversation about memory, resistance, collective authorship, and the role cinema can play when the present is still fighting with the past.

Trailer: Time Machine Maidan

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In this episode of Stream Close Up, Brian speaks with Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi about her documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.

The film follows Farsi’s remote collaboration with Fatma Hassona, a young Palestinian photographer and poet living in Gaza. Unable to enter Gaza herself, Sepideh began speaking with Fatma through video calls. Those conversations became the heart of the film, creating an intimate record of daily life, fear, resilience, friendship and artistic witness.

Sepideh discusses what first drove her toward the project, her own experience of war, exile and political violence, and why she felt it was essential to move beyond outside commentary and hear directly from someone living inside Gaza.

The conversation also explores the film’s unusual form. Instead of hiding the glitches, frozen images and broken internet connections, Sepideh chose to keep them. Those interruptions become part of the story, allowing the viewer to feel the fragility of the connection and the distance between the filmmaker and her subject.

They also discuss Fatma’s photography, her writing, her remarkable spirit, and the heartbreaking reality that the film now stands as both a collaboration and a memorial.

- Forensic Architecture investigation on the targeted attack on Fatma's house

Trailer: Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk 

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In this episode of Stream Close Up, Brian speaks with Swedish actor, writer, and director Malin Barr about her short film Sauna Sickness. The conversation explores Malin's journey from dance and acting into writing and directing, her decision to stay behind the camera for this project, and how her experience as a performer shapes the way she works with actors. They also discuss the film’s tense mix of drama, humor, and psychological unease, its strong cast, and the experience of bringing a Swedish short film to festivals including Gothenburg and Sundance.

Sauna Sickness Trailer

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In this episode of Stream Close Up, Brian speaks with Dutch-Afghan filmmaker Dawood Hilmandi about his award-winning feature documentary debut Paikar.

The film is a deeply personal journey through family, exile, memory, and the inheritance of war. Dawood reflects on his relationship with his father, the emotional strength of his mother, and the silence that can exist inside families shaped by displacement and political violence.

The conversation explores Dawood’s path as a storyteller, the role of poetry in his work, the impact of Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban, and why making Paikar changed his relationship to carrying a camera.

A thoughtful conversation about documentary filmmaking, family history, and the difficult work of understanding where we come from.

Paikar Trailer

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Des Lombardo & Badr Mastrouq are the co-creators of the comedy film "Skit" which is a mockumentary set in 2007 that follows three students as they attempt to create an early internet viral video.

Produced by media cartographer Evan Shapiro, "Skit" is a both a love letter to early internet creators as well as a proof of concept for making film in the creator environment. It is a creator led feature debut, produced fast and cheap, and launched with a real distribution story people in the industry actually want to study.

The film is funny and the story behind the production is educational.

Skit Trailer

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In this episode of Stream Close Up, Brian sits down with comedians and creators Sissela Benn and Jonatan Unge to talk about Popular Problems, their sharply observed new comedy series for SVT.

Based on their own former relationship and breakup, the show turns co-parenting, therapy, social services, and modern Swedish anxieties into painfully honest and often hilarious television. Benn and Unge discuss how the project grew out of an earlier Swedish Radio audio series, why they chose to mine their shared history for comedy, and how humor became a way to process a difficult separation. The conversation touches on collaboration after a breakup, drawing comedy from real life experiences, and the fine line between discomfort and truth that gives Popular Problems its bite.

Recorded on site ahead of a Stockholm Film Festival screening, the episode also captures the unpredictable realities of making podcasts outside the studio.

Popular Problems is set to debut on SVT in January.

It's funny.

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At the Stockholm Film Festival, Brian sits down with Dutch writer director Sven Bresser to talk about his debut feature Reedland, the stunning and meditative drama that has become the Netherlands’ official Oscar submission. Sven reflects on the film’s unusual blend of murder mystery and disappearing rural tradition, the influence of the reed landscape he grew up with, and the central performance by real life reed cutter Gerrit Knobbe. They discuss casting non actors, shaping cinematic language around nature, and how audiences around the world are responding to the film’s quiet exploration of fear, community and change.

Check out the Reedland Trailer

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