FRED Film Radio - English Channel

A Celebration of Global Cinema Excellence

Sydney Film Festival Director Nashen Moodley presents the line up of the 73rd edition of the festival, a long-standing platform for both emerging and established filmmakers, that will showcase over 250 films from more than 81 countries. As one of Australia’s most anticipated cultural events, it offers cinephiles a unique glimpse into the year’s most compelling films in an inclusive and dynamic environment, highlighting innovative narratives, bold cinematic voices and the vibrancy and diversity of contemporary filmmaking.

The Sydney Film Festival has become a cornerstone of Australia’s cultural calend...

We discover a unique insight into everyday life through “Diary of a Chambermaid”, by Radu Jude, presented at 79th Cannes Film Festival. The film  blends theatre and fiction to explore the unseen struggles of ordinary people. This captivating film offers a fresh perspective on stories that are often overlooked in our modern societies, as the director told us in our chat.

A journey into the diary of a chambermaid

The film draws inspiration from the “Diary of a Chambermaid” to portray the lives of women in domestic service within a contemporary context. By incorporating elements from Octa...

Actors Benoît Magimel and Bastien Bouillon tell us more about Léa Mysius’ “The Birthday Party”, presented in competition at the 79th Cannes Film Festival. After “Ava” (premiered in the Critics’ Week section in 2017) and “The Five Devils” (Directors’ Fortnight, 2022), for this atypical claustrophobic chamber piece set on a farm that also houses a painter’s studio, the talented French screenwriter-director has assembled a terrific ensemble cast also including Hafsia Herzi in a pivotal role, Monica Bellucci, and Paul Hamy. Our talk with Bouillon, who plays Herzi’s character’s husband, and Magimel, who embodies an ambiguous, scary party-crasher, was as frie...

During the 79th Cannes Film Festival, we sat down with the French filmmaker Bruno Dumont to talk about his latest film, “Red Rocks”, which was presented at the Directors’ Fortnight as a special event, followed by a masterclass. This time, the director, always highly recognisable despite the fact that his films may seem wildly different from one another – we owe him, amongst other works, “The Life of Jesus”, “Camille Claudel, 1915”, “Slack Bay”, “Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc” as well as “France” and “The Empire”, not to mentio...

Presented in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes 2026 film festival, “Ulya” marks the latest feature by Latvian filmmaker Viesturs Kairiss. The film is a co-production involving Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland, and focuses on the early years of legendary basketball player Ulyana Semyonova, one of the most dominant athletes in women’s basketball history.

Set in Soviet Latvia in 1964, the film follows teenage Ulya, an Old Believer girl growing up in a remote rural community. Nearly two meters tall, she struggles to find her place in a world that sees her only through her ph...

Winner of the People’s Choice Award at the Directors’ Fortnight of the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning“ is the fifth feature by BAFTA-nominated British director Clio Barnard, adapted by Enda Walsh from Keiran Goddard‘s novel of the same name. Set in Birmingham, the film follows five friends who have known each other since childhood, now turning thirty and navigating the distance between the lives they imagined and the ones they have. Among them are Rian, played by Joe Cole, a property developer who left f...

Winner of the People’s Choice Award at the Directors’ Fortnight of the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning”is the fifth feature by BAFTA-nominated British director Clio Barnard, adapted by Enda Walsh from Keiran Goddard’s novel of the same name. Set in Birmingham, the film follows a close-knit group of five friends who have known each other since childhood, now turning thirty and trying to find their footing in a country where the old promise work hard, rise above your class no longer holds. Among them are Patrick, played by Anthony Boyle, and...

Screening in the Un Certain Regard section of the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “Titanic Ocean” is the new feature by Greek director Konstantina Kotzamani. Set in a Japanese boarding school where teenage girls train to become professional mermaids, performing in aquariums and becoming stars under silicon tails and invented names, the film follows 17-year-old Akame as she learns to hold her breath, discovers first love and undergoes a transformation that goes far beyond performance. What sounds like pure invention is rooted in reality: the schools exist, the trend is massive across Asia, and Kotzamani spent ten years turn...

Winner of the L’Œil d’Or for best documentary at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered as a Special Screening, Rehearsals for a Revolution is the debut feature by Iranian actress and director Pegah Ahangarani. Built entirely from personal archives, home videos, protest footage, animations and voice recordings, the film traces over four decades of Iranian history through five portraits of people who shaped Pegah Ahangarani‘s life, relatives and mentors whose individual stories mirror the cycles of repression and resistance that have defined the country since 1979. Sentenced to eighteen months...

Presented at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “Che Guevara: The Last Companions” is the debut feature by Christophe Dimitri Reveille, a documentary that took over twenty years to complete. The film reconstructs the untold aftermath of Che Guevara’s execution in Bolivia in 1967, when his last surviving companions, three Cuban guerrilla fighters, undertook a gruelling 2,400-kilometre escape across Bolivia, hunted by thousands of soldiers. Through rare archival footage, animation and exclusive interviews with the protagonists themselves, as well as members of the Bolivian army and a CIA operative, Christophe Dimitri Reveille pieces together a story that h...

Hélène Rosselet-Ruiz, already noted for her short films, is one of the contenders for the Caméra d’Or with “Madame”, screened at the 79th Cannes Film Festival as part of the Special Screenings. To discuss this fascinating chamber piece co-written with Pauline Guéna (author of the story behind Dominik Moll’s excellent “The Night of the 12th”) which unfolds (almost) entirely in a private mansion located in the so-called “Golden Triangle”, the most luxurious area in Paris. The French director is joined by her actress Malou Khebizi, who pla...

After “I Have Electric Dreams”, which collected three Leopards at Locarno 2022, for best direction, best actress (Daniela Marín Navarro), and best actor (Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez), Costa Rican-French director Valentina Maurel has just shown her second feature film, “Forever Your Maternal Animal”, in the Un Certain Regard section of the 79th Cannes Film Festival, which owed the three protagonists of the film (Marina De Tavira, Daniela Marín Navarro, Mariangel Villegas) a joint Un Certain Regard Prize for Best Actress. 

On the fact that “Forever Your Maternal Animal” somewhat expands on what she did in her debut, featu...

Sarah Arnold’s debut feature, “Too Many Beasts”, set in a countryside teeming with wild boars, angry hunters and local authorities catering for their own needs, is a biting, surprisingly funny and rather exhilarating thriller revolving around a local police investigation on a gruesome murder, presented at the Directors’ Fortnight of the 79th Cannes Film Festival. The film features finely tuned, witty dialogues recited by a top-shelf ensemble led by a priceless Alexis Manenti as the initially taciturn and heartbroken but sharply observant Corsican newcomer at the police station, and the unfailingly badass Ella Rumpf as a police psychologist with who...

Actress-turned-director and known feminist activist Judith Godrèche tells us more about her adaptation of fellow-activist Annie Ernaux‘ 2016 novel, presented in the Un Certain Regard section of the 79th Cannes Film Festival.

Judith Godrèche explains why she wanted the Nobel Prize-winning author to be included in the film, to be “a character too”. We discuss the shame her main character Annie, in 1958, feels about things she feels responsible for when she isn’t – “She’s carrying the weight of that and it impacts her body, and it impacts her future and her vision of her future“. We also discuss th...

In competition at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, “The Dreamed Adventure” marks Valeska Grisebach’s return to Bulgaria after “Western”. Set in Svilengrad, a town on the Bulgarian border, the film follows Veska, an archaeologist, as her encounter with Said, an old acquaintance whose car has been stolen, pulls her into a hidden network of criminal ties beneath the town’s apparently quiet surface.

Grisebach explained that her earlier experience in Bulgaria left her with the sense that the country still held stories she needed to understand.

“I realised how limited my knowledge about Europe is,” she said...

In competition at the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, “All of a Sudden” marks a new chapter in the work of Ryusuke Hamaguchi, continuing the director’s exploration of communication, intimacy and emotional ambiguity after “Drive My Car”.

The film follows Marie-Lou, director of a care facility for the elderly, as she attempts to introduce a philosophy of care grounded in dignity and attentive listening. Her encounter with Mari, a Japanese theatre director living with cancer, gradually transforms both women, creating a profound bond that transcends language, illness and cultural distance.

Hamaguchi reflected extensivel...