FRED Film Radio - English Channel

Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson bring Bucking Fastard, directed by Werner Herzog, to the 83rd Venice Film Festival, where the film is in competition. The two actors speak about what it means to work with Herzog, the singular nature of the script, why they choose the projects they do, the freedom of working outside the studio system, and what it was like acting opposite Kate Mara and Rooney Mara’s synchronized performances as two sisters who speak, move and dream in unison.

A gift to work with a master

Asked what it...

Werner Herzog is in competition at the Venice Film Festival 2026 with Bucking Fastard, which follows two sisters, Jean and Joan Holbrooke, played by Kate Mara and Rooney Mara, who are so close that they speak in unison, love the same man, and share the same dreams, down to making the same slip of the tongue at once. The story also traces how the world reacts to them, through courts and press, through those who want to help and those who want to use them, with a cast that also includes Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson. Herzog spoke about the...

During the Venice Film Festival 2026 we spoke with director Sergei Loznitsa for his new film Imperium, presented here at the festival in the Venice Open – Out of Competition section. , director of the film Imperium, was interviewed at the eighty-third Venice Film Festival. This remarkable documentary, as the title may suggest, explores the cultural, social, and historical diversity of the former Soviet Union through a unique collage of footage and archive material. The “empire” in this context refers to the vast, imperial dimension of the USSR that the film aims to depict and analyze.

The interview

During...

During the Venice Film Festival 2026 we spoke with Manuel Wetscher, director and co-writer of the film Eklipse presented here in the Orizzonti section of the festival. During our conversation, we discussed the autobiographical elements of the film, a exploring the themes of HIV illness, emancipation, and mostly ignorance and stigma. The film then delves into personal experiences, transforming into fiction and shedding a light on how personal memories influence cinematic storytelling and exploring the director’s artistic process and message.

The interview

During our interview with FRED FIlmmRadio, the director Manuel Wetscher explained that in the...

John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell bring Wild Horse Nine, directed by Martin McDonagh, to the Venice Film Festival 2026, where the film is in competition. At the heart of the film is the friendship between two CIA agents, set against the backdrop of Chile in 1973.

An old friendship, forged out of fear

Rockwell and Malkovich go back years, long before Wild Horse Nine. “We’re old pals,” Rockwell says. “We became pals on this movie, but we know each other from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy...

Start your day on FRED Film Radio with Venice Production Bridge 2026 morning preview: for the first six days of the market, Carolina Mancini joined by VPB director Pascal Diot, Chiara Marin, Coordinator of the market and Curator of Book Adaptation Rights Market and Alessandra Speciale, Curator of Final Cut in Venice, walks you through the unmissable events and the highlights of the Venice Production Bridge, taking place between the Hotel Excelsior, the Venice Immersive Island (Lazzaretto Vecchio) and the Match Point Arena.

Choose your panels and set your agenda with FRED Film Radio!

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Beyond Physical Strength

Opening the Venice Film Festival’s Venice Spotlight section, Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing looks beyond the physical power and imposing bodies associated with sumo. Director Erik Shirai explores the spiritual and psychological dimensions of a tradition that is often misunderstood outside Japan. The title reflects the idea that sumo cannot be measured solely through weight, strength or victory. At its core, the discipline is about confronting oneself. The greatest opponent is often not the wrestler across the ring, but the person within.

Growing up in the United States, Shirai was fa...

The Architecture of Confinement

The film Falling House (Moragheb) traps its audience from the very first frame. Unfolding entirely within the claustrophobic walls of a single residence, the narrative creates a space that feels less like a home and more like a prison. For director Mohsen Gharaei, this setting was a deliberate choice to externalize the internal decay of the family unit. The house functions as a pressure cooker, where secrets and silence create a suffocating atmosphere that reflects the broader social anxieties prevalent in the filmmakers’ home country.

Gharaei notes that while th...

Global Critics Venice Voice, hosted by internationally renowned film critic Rita Di Santo, is the daily podcast of the Venice International Film Festival 2026, produced by FRED Film Radio directly from the Lido di Venezia.

Each episode takes listeners inside the Festival with exclusive and thoughtful conversations with leading international film critics, and in-depth analysis of the year’s most anticipated films.

Rita Di Santo and her guests bring to life the unique atmosphere of Venice, offering a rare insider’s view of the stories, talent, and cinematic moments that make the Mostra one of the world’s m...

Across The Bridge brings you the highlights and the best of Venice Production Bridge 2026.
In a daily podcast, Angelo Acerbi and Carolina Mancini explore the key events, discussions and issues shaping VPB 2026, with the help of guests and interviews, offering an insider’s perspective on one of the film industry’s most distinctive and effective film markets.

The post Across The Bridge — The Best of Venice Production Bridge 2026, September 4 appeared first on Fred Film Radio.

We spoke to Leonidas Christopoulos, CEO of EKKOMED (the Hellenic Film Audiovisual Centre), right after the panel “Greece on Screen,” where Christopoulos was one of the panelists, together with Orestis Andreadakis, the Artistic Director of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

Greece in the Spotlight on the International Scene

Greece was on every screen this summer thanks to Odyssey by Christopher Nolan. Now it is the Country in Focus in Venice, it will be hosting the European Film Awards next January, and it will be the Country of Honour of the Cannes Marché du Film 2027.

Tw...

Global Critics Venice Voice, hosted by internationally renowned film critic Rita Di Santo, is the daily podcast of the Venice International Film Festival 2026, produced by FRED Film Radio directly from the Lido di Venezia.

Each episode takes listeners inside the Festival with exclusive and thoughtful conversations with leading international film critics, and in-depth analysis of the year’s most anticipated films.

Rita Di Santo and her guests bring to life the unique atmosphere of Venice, offering a rare insider’s view of the stories, talent, and cinematic moments that make the Mostra one of the world’s m...

Start your day on FRED Film Radio with Venice Production Bridge 2026 morning preview: for the first six days of the market, Carolina Mancini joined by VPB director Pascal Diot, Chiara Marin, Coordinator of the market and Curator of Book Adaptation Rights Market and Alessandra Speciale, Curator of Final Cut in Venice, walks you through the unmissable events and the highlights of the Venice Production Bridge, taking place between the Hotel Excelsior, the Venice Immersive Island (Lazzaretto Vecchio) and the Match Point Arena.

Choose your panels and set your agenda with FRED Film Radio!

Stay up...

Today, September 3rd, the Venice Production Bridge opens on the Venice Immersive Island (Lazzaretto Vecchio Island) where Venice Immersive works are being showcased.

Venice Immersive is the Venice Film Festival and VPB flagship initiative dedicated to immersive works, turns 10 this year, while the it’s market, the Venice Gap Financing Market Immersive, turns 5. We talk to Michel Reilhac, curator, together with Liz Rosenthal of the Venice Immersive Selection and also of the VFGM Immersive selection.

The evolution of Venice Immersive

Venice Immersive has been a pioneering space since its inception in 2016. Michel Reilhac exp...

Martin McDonagh returns to the Venice Film Festival 2026, in competition at the 83rd edition with Wild Horse Nine, starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as longtime CIA partners Chris and Lee. Set just before the 1973 Chilean coup, the film follows the two agents as they are sent by their section chief, MJ (Steve Buscemi), from Santiago to Easter Island, where, among the island’s ancient statues, Chris’s new bond with two rebellious students (played by Mariana Di Girolamo and Ailín Salas) threatens to unravel everything. Balan...

The Girl with the Leica opens the Orizzonti section of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival 2026. Directed by Alina Marazzi, with lead actress Emilia Schüle, the film follows the photographer Gerda Taro: her life in Germany in the early 1930s, her exile in Paris, where she meets fellow exile Robert Capa, and her work documenting the consequences of war on the civilian population in Spain.

On FRED, Alina Marazzi and Emilia Schüle introduce The Girl with the Leica starting from a sentence Gerda Taro says at one po...

Start your day on FRED Film Radio with Venice Production Bridge 2026 morning preview: for the first six days of the market, Carolina Mancini joined by VPB director Pascal Diot, Chiara Marin, Coordinator of the market and Curator of Book Adaptation Rights Market and Alessandra Speciale, Curator of Final Cut in Venice, walks you through the unmissable events and the highlights of the Venice Production Bridge, taking place between the Hotel Excelsior, the Venice Immersive Island (Lazzaretto Vecchio) and the Match Point Arena.

Choose your panels and set your agenda with FRED Film Radio!

Stay up...

Ink, the film that opens the 83rd Venice International Film Festival 2026 in official competition, tells the story of The Sun, the British tabloid launched in 1969 by Rupert Murdoch and Larry Lamb. “1969: the year we first walked on the moon, and the year Rupert Murdoch and Larry Lamb launched a newspaper that was to change the world far more,” says director Danny Boyle, who describes it as born to become “a new tabloid that, against all the odds, became the biggest-selling newspaper in the world”: “cheeky, irreverent, daring… the ‘super soaraway’ Sun challenged the establishment an...

Global Critics Venice Voice, hosted by internationally renowned film critic Rita Di Santo, is the daily podcast of the Venice International Film Festival 2026, produced by FRED Film Radio directly from the Lido di Venezia.

Each episode takes listeners inside the Festival with exclusive and thoughtful conversations with leading international film critics, and in-depth analysis of the year’s most anticipated films.

Rita Di Santo and her guests bring to life the unique atmosphere of Venice, offering a rare insider’s view of the stories, talent, and cinematic moments that make the Mostra one of the world’s m...

Start your day on FRED Film Radio with Venice Production Bridge 2026 morning preview: for the first six days of the market, Carolina Mancini joined by VPB director Pascal Diot, Chiara Marin, Coordinator of the market and Curator of Book Adaptation Rights Market and Alessandra Speciale, Curator of Final Cut in Venice, walks you through the unmissable events and the highlights of the Venice Production Bridge, taking place between the Hotel Excelsior, the Venice Immersive Island (Lazzaretto Vecchio) and the Match Point Arena.

Choose your panels and set your agenda with FRED Film Radio!

Stay up...

The second feature film of Tunisian-born director Youssef Chebbi, Plague, is one one of the six feature films selected at the 14th edition of Final Cut in Venice, the program of  Venice Film Festival and Venice Production Bridge that supports film in post-production from all African countries and six countries of the Middle East (Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen).

Plague is a story about two twin brothers working in palm tree exploitation in Tunisia. The plot revolves around their daily lives, which take a turn when one brother encounters a palm tree-eating parasite.

U...

Madi Makambu is the second feature of congolese director and screenwriter Machérie Ekwa Bahango about the lives of the two lovers, Madi and Djino, who experienced a denied pregnancy.

It is one of the six feature films selected at the 14th edition of Final Cut in Venice, the program of  Venice Film Festival and Venice Production Bridge that supports film in post-production from all African countries and six countries of the Middle East (Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen).

The challanges of filmmaking in the DR of Congo

After her successful de...

Rula Nasser, producer (with The Imaginarium Films) of the film Occupational Hazards by Bassel Ghandour, discusses this compelling Palestinian family dark comedy and drama. The film is one of the six feature films selected at the 14th edition of Final Cut in Venice 2026, the program of Venice Film Festival and Venice Production Bridge that supports film in post-production from all African countries and six countries of the Middle East (Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen).

A  perspective on Palestinian resilience amid restrictions

The story of Occupational Hazards centers on a P...

A Quarter to Thursday by Algerian screenwriter and director Sophia Djama, is one of the six feature films selected at the 14th edition of Final Cut in Venice 2026, the program of Venice Film Festival and Venice Production Bridge that supports film in post-production from all African countries and six countries of the Middle East (Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen).

Sophia Djama is a filmmaker whose work explores surrealist worlds and political themes. With A Quarter to Thursday, she aims to address issues of fascism, authoritarianism, and gender rights through a satirical lens, set...

Francesca Duca, producer (from Le Moindre Geste) of Eldorado, the taste of the South by Tunisian director and screenwriter Alaa Eddine Aljem. Eldorado, the taste of the South is one of the six feature films selected at the 14th edition of Final Cut in Venice 2026, the program of Venice Film Festival and Venice Production Bridge that supports film in post-production from all African countries and six countries of the Middle East (Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen).

Eldorado, the taste of the South explores the themes of migration and societal borders, blending...

Tamara Mariam Dawit, producer from Gobez Media, and acclaimed Ethiopian director Abraham Gezahagne, are the creative team behind the film Mehal Sefari, which is one of the six feature films selected at the 14th edition of Final Cut in Venice 2026, the program of Venice Film Festival and Venice Production Bridge that supports film in post-production from all African countries and six countries of the Middle East (Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen).

Mehal Sefari is the first project from Ethiopia’s to make it into Final Cut in Venice: this emphasizes the im...