FRED Film Radio - English Channel

Premiering November 4 on Prime Video, The Greatest is the first authorized scripted series about the life of Muhammad Ali, created by showrunner Ben Watkins and executive produced by Lonnie Ali. The eight-episode first season follows a young Cassius Clay, played by Jaalen Best, from his return home to Louisville, Kentucky, with an Olympic gold medal from the 1960 Rome Games, through his first heavyweight championship and his emergence as Muhammad Ali, with Giovanni Ribisi as his trainer Angelo Dundee. Watkins, Best and Ribisi talk about the choice to tell the story as a coming of age, what it means to play someone who made a difference, responsibility and the willingness to disagree with your environment, Ali’s legacy of shared humanity, and the relationship between a fighter and his trainer. Before the icon For Ben Watkins, the starting point was the image everyone already has of Muhammad Ali: “You’re talking about someone that everyone knows the name. And if you say the name, everyone pictures something.…

Director Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet and protagonist Léa Drucker Drucker discuss La Vie d’une Femme, presented at the 18th France Odeon Festival in Florence. Their conversation explores a woman balancing a demanding career and personal choices, as well as the unexpected connection that unsettles her sense of independence. It also reveals how observation and close preparation shaped the film’s portrayal of a surgeon. Independence and fascination in La Vie d’une Femme Gabrielle, the protagonist of the La Vie d’une Femme, has built a life according to her own decisions, including choosing not to become a mother, yet meeting Frida makes her reconsider what freedom can look like. Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet describes Frida as someone drawn to solitude and unburdened by the responsibilities that define Gabrielle’s world. That contrast makes Frida both a source of fascination and a possible alternative, rather than simply a romantic interest. The relationship gives the story a way to examine how a person’s settled…

After Cannes 2026, La bola negra by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi arrives at the 21st Rome Film Fest as Spain’s candidate in the Oscar race. The film tells the interconnected stories of three men in three different eras, three lives intimately linked by sexuality and desire, pain and inheritance, and by one of Federico García Lorca’s last, unfinished works. The directors talk about the decision not to deny oneself that lies at the heart of the film, their tribute to what Lorca wanted to write, the stories of the LGBTQ+ elders that inspired one of the timelines, and a film that starts as a queer movie and ends up speaking to everyone. The film will be released in Italian cinemas by Movies Inspired from January 14th, 2027 A film about a decision The film, they say at one point that La Bola Negra, the unfinished work by Federico García Lorca, is a work about a decision. Is the film also about that? Javier Ambrossi nods and say: “We investigated and understood that La bola negra, the unfinished work by…

“Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Paloma Schneideman, produced by Jane Campion, was one of the 5 films in Competition at the 47th Festival di Cinema e Donne in Florence. The film executive producers were Jane Campion and Philippa Campbell, and the film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2026. From a planned short to Big Girls Don’t Cry At the origin of Big Girls don’t Cry there is Jane Campion’s filmmaking programme A Wave in the Ocean. Paloma Schneideman entered it with a feature already in development, while the group’s original task was to make short films. After reading the script, Campion supported Schneideman in using the programme to explore and prepare the longer project. The short was never produced, but the experience helped Schneideman recognise where her strongest creative instincts lay. A filmmaking school built around experimentation As a member of the programme’s first group, Paloma Schneideman was among ten filmmakers selected by Campion and Campbell. The participants had access to equipment,…

Presented in the Grand Public section of the 21st Rome International Film Festival and coming to Italian cinemas with Eagle Pictures, Me, You by Bille August is set in 1950 on a small Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea. It tells the story of Marco, a fourteen-year-old Londoner on holiday with his family, and of his encounter with Caia, a young Jewish woman orphaned during the Second World War. Over the course of the summer, their bond turns into a journey of discovery and growth, touching on the trauma of war, memory and the passage from childhood to adolescence. Sonia Ammar, who plays Caia, talks about a shoot where the whole island became the set, the emotional backstory she built for a character of few words, the flashbacks she has yet to see, and the lesson of empathy the film carries into the present. The whole island was a set Asked how this more intimate production compared with her previous experiences, Ammar describes it as one of the most special of her career, largely because of where it was…

Presented at the 23rd edition of Alice nella Città, Big Girls Don’t Cry is the feature debut of New Zealand director Paloma Schneidman. It’s the summer holidays in rural New Zealand, and fourteen-year-old Sid has nothing to fill them. Her father has checked out, and her only window onto a bigger life is a borrowed MSN account. Online and off, she watches the older teens who seem to move through the world so easily, and tries on their attitudes like stolen clothes. What she feels for them is part envy, part something she doesn’t yet have the words for. Schneidman talks about making peace with her own adolescence, the choice to tell the story entirely from Sid’s perspective, the ambiguity between wanting someone and wanting to be them, and how she found her lead, Ani Palmer. A story that arrived fully formed Asked what sparked her first feature, Schneidman says the story found her rather than the other way around: “I feel like it chose me and, like many ideas, they come to you, and this one arrived quite fully…

Eva Sangiorgi, festival director of the Viennale 2026, describes an event built around bringing a broad selection of recent cinema to audiences in Vienna. The festival combines contemporary films with historical programmes, without dividing its main selection into competitions or genre categories. Sangiorgi’s account offers a view of how the Viennale balances discovery, accessibility and film history. Its programme reflects both the range of cinema being made today and the festival’s relationship with its local audience. A city festival centred on its audience The Viennale takes place across independent cinemas in Vienna, with a programme designed primarily for the city’s filmgoers rather than industry professionals. Sangiorgi says the festival presents more than 100 contemporary feature films and over 40 shorts, bringing together work from varied countries, production contexts and scales. The selection ranges from films backed by major studios or streaming companies to independently made projects. Rather…

During the Rome Film Fest 2026, we spoke with Ruth Beckermann, director of the documentary feature Wax & Gold. The documentary, presented at the Festival, examines Ethiopia through the life of a hotel and the histories attached to it. The film brings together contemporary scenes, archival footage, music and reflections on how outsiders have represented the country. Beckermann’s account is indeed notable for questioning both the European gaze and the easy narratives that can turn historical figures into symbols. The interview During our interview for FRED Film Radio, it was clear how the Hilton in Addis Ababa offered Ruth Beckermann a setting through which to encounter middle- and upper-class guests alongside employees with relatively stable work. In her documentary Wax & Gold, did not want to frame Ethiopia solely through images of rural poverty, a perspective that often dominates television coverage. The hotel does obviously not represent every layer of society, she stressed, but its mix of visitors and…

Presented in competition at Alice nella Città 2026, Mala Bèstia marks Bàrbara Farré’s feature directorial debut, exploring adolescence through the unsettling language of dark fairy tales and psychological thrillers. Farré and producer Diego Betancor discuss the film’s personal origins, its examination of female identity and the importance of preserving creative freedom in contemporary filmmaking. At the center of the story is Atenea, a girl at a boarding school who desperately wants to remain a child. When a couple offers her the possibility of a family, she begins to imagine a future shaped by affection and belonging. Yet the fear of losing her place, or being replaced, gradually awakens something darker within her. Rather than approaching adolescence realistically, Farré turns the anxieties of growing up into a disturbing narrative about bodily transformation, desire, and the need to be accepted. Mala Bèstia: adolescence as a frightening transformation For Farré, portraying adolescence as a threatening…

During the 24th edition of Alice nella Città, in Rome, we spoke with character designer Thibault Leclercq for the film Wildwood, e mesmerizing tale of adventure and discovery that uses the stop-motion animation technique with a bigger scale than ever. The film adapts a novel by Colin Meloy enriched by his wife Carson Ellis’ illustrations, which provided a distinctive starting point also for the character designs of the film. Leclercq describes indeed how the team sought to honour that visual identity while shaping characters for a feature film with a more mature tone, also revealing how Portland’s landscape and the practical demands of puppetry helped in creating the film’s blend of naturalism and fantasy. The interview During our interview on FRED Film Radio, Leclercq stated that the Wildwood design process began with a commitment to retain the charm and illustrative quality associated with Ellis’s work. That influence appears in the puppets’ fine details, from their hair and anatomical features to the…

Marian Arechega, the director of the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival, discusses the evolution and highlights of the festival’s 13th edition. She emphasises the festival’s growth in Scotland, its diverse programming, and its efforts to foster cultural exchange through Spanish cinema. This interview offers insight into how the festival continues to strengthen its role as a key platform for Spanish films in the UK. The festival’s development and regional reach Marian Arechega explains that the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival began thirteen years ago with no prior experience in organising such an event. Over time, it has established itself firmly within Scotland, attracting a growing audience and creating a stable cultural initiative. Originally focused solely on Edinburgh, the festival now extends its screenings to several Scottish cities and even beyond, including one event in Manchester, broadening its impact and visibility. Diversity of themes and films in the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival This year’s…

In Italian cinemas from October 1, distributed by MUBI, Her Private Hell is Nicolas Winding Refn‘s first feature in ten years, since The Neon Demon. Set in a surreal, futuristic metropolis shrouded in pink mist, the film follows Elle (Sophie Thatcher), a rising movie star preparing to shoot a space odyssey alongside her ex-lover turned stepmother (Havana Rose Liu), while elsewhere in the haze an American GI (Charles Melton) wanders the desolate streets in a desperate search for his daughter. As a sinister figure known only as the Leather Man stalks the city’s shadows, their lives begin to converge, dissolving the boundaries between past and present, memory and fate. The director talks about blending many genres into a single film, the father-daughter relationship at its core, his collaboration with composer Pino Donaggio, and the near-death experience that brought him back to cinema after years spent in the world of streaming. Many movies in one For Refn, the starting point was the idea that genres no longer…

Torsten Frehse, director and founder of the EWIP – European Work in Progress platform, discusses the significance of this initiative in supporting European and international film projects. The conversation highlights the platform’s role in bridging the gap between production and distribution, and emphasizes the importance of EWIP in fostering a more dynamic and accessible market for emerging filmmakers. The role of EWIP in shaping film distribution strategies Frehse explains that EWIP serves as a crucial marketplace where projects in the midst of production or post-production can be showcased to a targeted audience of buyers, sales agents, and festival representatives. It’s focus on distribution is due to the extensive experience of its director: Torsten Frehse is CEO of the German distribution company Neue Visionen, and his co-director Olimpia Pont Cháfer, is the coordinator of the Spanish film distributor association, ADICINE and responsable of acquistions of the German distribution company Piffl Medien.…

Avec Pascal Diot, directeur du Venice Production Bridge, nous avons discuté des résultats obtenus après 15 ans — puisque c’est la 15e édition cette année — d’avoir créé un endroit où les professionnels du cinéma ont plaisir à revenir pour discuter, négocier, échanger et travailler dans une atmosphère à la fois détendue et efficace. La Création d’une Nouvelle Section Diot nous dévoile un nouvel événement au sein du Venice Production Bridge, le VPB Location Market, destiné à couvrir l’ensemble de la chaîne de production du cinéma. Les lieux de tournage étaient un maillon manquant, pourtant essentiel pour les producteurs : sans lieu, pas de tournage possible. Le VPB Location Market rassemble des commissions du film et des studios, en créant un événement dédié au sein d’un festival de classe A — une première. Un Nouvel Espace L’événement se tient au Matchpoint Arena, où ont lieu traditionnellement les masterclasses du festival chaque après-midi. La programmation a été adaptée pour le matin : l’espace accueille…

Presented in the Open section, out of competition, at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival 2026, Boatbuilders is set at the head of a remote Maine harbor, where the sixty-some workers of the Brooklin Boat Yard coax wooden planks around a frame, make precise saw cuts, and sand edges for flawless joints, resulting in some of the most stunning and sought-after wooden vessels in the world. Over the course of four vibrant seasons, director Luke Lorentzen tracks the boatbuilders’ meticulous construction of a 56-foot sailboat while embedding us in the lives of these men and their close-knit community. Lorentzen talks about why he chose this story after a difficult previous film, about building the film as an ensemble rather than around a single lead, and about the attention to detail he learned from the boatbuilders themselves. Falling back in love with the process of shooting Lorentzen explains that Boatbuilders was, in part, a deliberate reaction to the film he had made right before it: “I had just…

Presented in Venice Open – Out of Competition during the Venice Film Festival 2026, The Basics of Philosophy follows John Jorissen, a philosophy professor in the American Midwest working on a book about Spinoza, whose quiet life with his partner Becca and her son Willie is upended when the sudden reappearance of a young man, Miguel Basque, at his estranged father’s funeral forces him to confront a past incident he has never accounted for. Wracked with guilt and doubting that Spinoza’s God will ever pardon him, Jorissen buys a lethal dose of euthanasia powder even as he asks Becca to marry him. Director Paul Schrader talks about the film’s questions of change and forgiveness, and about how he sees film criticism in the age of the internet. Change, Guilt, and Forgiveness Asked about the possibility of change, both in the film and in his own filmmaking over the decades, Schrader ties the question directly to the line his character speaks: “As the character says, I think I have changed but I have not been…

Liryc Dela Cruz, director of the short film A Brief Encounter, discusses his latest work at the International Critics Week section of the Venice Film Festival 2026. The film explores themes of trauma, tenderness, and human connection amid a backdrop of violence and digital detachment. Exploring Tenderness in A Brief Encounter Dela Cruz explains that the story was inspired by a conversation about Filipino digital cleaners, highlighting the often unseen labor behind online footprints. The narrative centers on a woman who receives distressing news about loved ones’ suicides, but instead of dwelling on violence, the film emphasizes intimate gestures and human care. He emphasizes that the off-screen tragedies serve as a stark contrast to the gentle physical contact portrayed on screen, aiming to evoke empathy without explicit violence. The filmmaker also notes his intention to capture fleeting moments of connection that stand out amid a flood of violent images in contemporary media. The Role of the Digital Space…