Francine & Caitlin don headsets, download apps, and get immersed at Sheffield Doc/Fest

Francine Stock talks to Ari Aster, the director of the film dubbed the scariest of the year, Hereditary. He explains why Mike Leigh was the greatest influence on his horror movie.

Francine and Caitlin Benedict visit the Sheffield Documentary Festival, where they encounter film-maker Mark Cousins, enter two containers marked Hate and Hope as part of an installation by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, experience what it's like to be a soldier under fire in Iraq in a virtual reality piece called Mind At War by Sutu, meet Michael Smith and Tom Stubbs, the makers of Dawn Of The Dark Fox, the first feature film by an autistic director, and unravel the mystery of Three Identical Strangers with director Tim Wardle.

Francine enters The World Unknown To You and speaks to the creators of VR work Belongings

Francine and her plucky sidekick Caitlin choose Hope or Hate at Sheffield Doc/Fest

Francine Stock visits the archive of Richard Attenborough in the University of Sussex, which contains over 700 boxes of letters, photos, film reviews and a Chelsea shirt signed by John Terry. As it opens to the public for the first time, Richard's son Michael Attenborough reveals the memories that the archive has evoked, like his visit to the set of Gandhi, while archivist Eleanor King takes Francine through some of the vast collection.

Louise Brooks launched a thousand haircuts with her idiosyncratic take on the bob, but historian Pamela Hutchinson argues that she was more than just a style icon.

Listener Julie Ma presents her three rules for the depiction of East Asian characters that she'd like film-makers to follow.

On the podcast: Francine Stock presents the story of Ida Lupino, the actress from Herne Hill who became a Hollywood star and a ground-breaking director, the only female film-maker working in the industry for a long while in the 40s and 50s.

Cult director J.A. Bayona tells Francine Stock why he took on the dinosaurs in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and why it's really a haunted house movie.

Composer Neil Brand takes us on a tour with Taxi Driver, Bernard Herrmann's game-changing score for Martin Scorsese's masterpiece.

Anna Smith looks back at Big on its thirtieth anniversary and reveals how the Tom Hanks comedy relates to the weird trend for body-swap movies in the late 80s.

In another edition of Pitch Battle, listener Gerald Corvin pitches a bio-pic centred around the world of bare knuckle boxing in the 18th century, once the most popular sport in England, despite being illegal

On the podcast: the first edition of a new series, How Do You Solve a Problem Like... Grease, in which musical fans Caitlin Benedict and Melody Bridges ponder the universal question - can you love a musical that's politically incorrect, specially when you know all the songs and can quote all the lyrics ?

With Francine Stock.

Nora Twomey, director of The Breadwinner, explains how an animation about life under the Taliban in Afghanistan was produced by Angelina Jolie and made in Kilkenny

Olivia Hetreed is president of the Writers Guild Of Great Britain that published a report this week which revealed that only 16% of screenwriters are female. She crunches the figures with Francine, and discusses the moment she woke up one day and wondered "where have all the women gone ?". She reveals why she has been stereotyped as a writer who specializes in costume dramas after penning the adaptation of Girl With The Pearl Earring, and why she would really love to write science fiction.

Perfume expert and film writer Dariush Alavi detects the scent of film noir in his olfactory history of the movies and reveals what Barbara Stanwyck might be wearing in Double Indemnity to tempt Fred MacMurray.

Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller joined an illustrious club when they were removed from the production of the latest Star Wars spin-off, Solo. Five directors, for instance, left the helm of The Wizard Of Oz, with Victor Fleming taking the ultimate credit. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh takes us through some of the famous names who were handed their P45,and reveals the contents of the lesser-known Eastwood Rule, named after Clint Eastwood.

With Francine Stock.

Saoirse Ronan discusses her role in On Chesil Beach, as a young bride whose wedding night goes disastrously wrong with unforeseen consequences, and explains why Ian McEwan didn't mind her ditching some of his dialogue, even though he wrote both the novel and the screenplay.

Critic Tim Robey and film buyer Clare Binns report on the classics and calamities they've witnessed at the Cannes Film Festival this week.

The ever-controversial A to Z of film-makers ends this week with Z, appropriately enough. And Francine has another odd couple to choose between - the director of Hollywood blockbusters and a sixth generation Chinese neo-realist known as the poet of globalisation.

With Francine Stock

The Artist director Michel Hazanavicius discusses his bio-pic about Jean-Luc Godard, Redoubtable, and reveals whether it's meant to be tribute or insult.

Matilda Lutz and Coralie Fargeat, the director and star of Revenge, discuss the ethics of their feminist horror film

Film buyer Clare Binns and critic Tim Robey take their pick of the movies on offer at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Award winning British director Andrew Haigh reveals why travelled to the southern states of America for his horse racing drama Lean On Pete.