Film Interviews
theartsdesk Q&A: director Andreas Dresen on his anti-Nazi resistance drama 'From Hilde, with Love'Saturday, 28 June 2025
Andreas Dresen directs socially engaged realist films that invariably relay personal and political messages; the result can be tough but is usually tender at heart. Read more... |
Bleak landscapes and banjos: composer Bernard Hughes discusses his score for 'Chicken Town'Thursday, 26 June 2025
Composer Bernard Hughes first met director Richard Bracewell when working on the film Bill, a 2015 Horrible Histories take on the life of Shakespeare for which he provided some of the score. The pair were keen to collaborate again but the pandemic put paid to their plans. The new black comedy Chicken Town sees the pair reunited. GRAHAM RICKSON: This is a film made on a small budget. How do the economics of a production affect how you work? Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Gary Oldman on playing John Cheever in 'Parthenope' and beating the boozeThursday, 08 May 2025
Gary Oldman has always lived life to the fullest, on screen and off. Maybe that's why he is often at his best in his pitch-perfect portraits of real-life personae such as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour and Herman J Mankiewicz in Mank. He now stars as the bibulous middle-aged American author John Cheever in Parthenope, Paolo Sorrentino's latest lush homage to Italy's recent past. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: film director Déa Kulumbegashvili on her startling second feature, 'April'Sunday, 04 May 2025
One of the most exciting new voices in Eastern European film, Déa Kulumbegashvili is not concerned with conventional shot lengths. She has been described as a director of "slow cinema", which she regards as a compliment. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: director Leonardo Van Dijl discusses his sexual abuse drama 'Julie Keeps Quiet'Wednesday, 30 April 2025
"Julie's story takes place everywhere", says the writer-director Leonardo Van Dijl, whose psychological drama Julie Keeps Quiet has little to do with its sports milieu per se. "Uncovering systemic abuse often starts by listening to the silence and paying attention to the people who don't speak out." Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Miguel Gomes on his latest exotic opus, 'Grand Tour'Wednesday, 23 April 2025
It doesn't take much to get lost in a film by Miguel Gomes. In fact, it's required. Multiple layers, timelines, and perspectives unfold in his cinema is mysterious ways, allowing the Portuguese director to tackle the themes that interest him: great love, colonialism, chance, destiny, death, and a dreary Portuguese world that is by no means willing to let anyone take away its history – or its stories. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer on his apocalyptic musical 'The End'Tuesday, 01 April 2025
Joshua Oppenheimer made his name directing two disturbing documentaries, The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), that dealt with the aftermath of the brutal anti-communist massacres in Indonesia in 1965-66. Those films addressed how people lie to themselves in order to live with guilt and trauma. Oppenheimer's first fiction film, The End, is a radical continuation of the same idea. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: director François Ozon on 'When Autumn Falls'Thursday, 20 March 2025
François Ozon is France’s master of sly secrets, burying hard truths in often dazzling surfaces, from Swimming Pool’s erotic mystery of writing and murder in 2003 to the teenage boy cuckooing his way into his middle-aged mentor’s life in In the House (2012). Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Indian star Radhika Apte on 'Sister Midnight'Monday, 17 March 2025
Radhika Apte has been acclaimed for her ebullient performance as a reluctant bride in Sister Midnight since director Karan Kandhari’s comic horror movie was launched at Cannes last May. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Raoul Peck, director of the documentary 'Ernest Cole: Lost and Found'Tuesday, 11 March 2025
With his furious docu-essay I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck caused a stir in 2016. The film about African-American writer James Baldwin and the Civil Rights Movement not only put the Haitian-born Peck on the map as a director, but also made him one of the defining figures of contemporary black cinema. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Oscar-winner Adrien Brody on 'The Brutalist'Friday, 07 March 2025
Adrien Brody is on a roll. Following his Golden Globe and BAFTA Best Actor wins for his performance as László Toth in Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, Brody picked up the equivalent Oscar last Sunday, celebrating it by giving the longest speech in Academy Awards history. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof on 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig' - 'It became a question of self-respect'Wednesday, 12 February 2025
Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is now an Oscar-nominated refugee, in a bittersweet harvest for his film The Seed of the Sacred Fig. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan and Galen Johnson on 'Rumours'Saturday, 07 December 2024
Somewhere in Germany, G7 conference leaders including German Chancellor Ortmann (Cate Blanchett) and US President Wolcott (Charles Dance) repair to a gazebo to collaborate on a “clear, but not so clear” communique addressing an unnamed, possibly apocalyptic crisis. Farcically human, they pocket hors d’oeuvres, flirt and pull rank, lose tempers and trousers. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Payal Kapadia on 'All We Imagine as Light'Friday, 06 December 2024
Payal Kapadia’s lyrical fiction feature debut All We Imagine as Light, which received the Grand Prix at Cannes in May, is now accruing end-of-year prizes. This week, the New York Film Critics Circle and the voters for the Gotham Awards (which honours independent movies) named it 2024’s Best International Film. More prizes will follow. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: director Jacques Audiard on his Mexican trans gangster musical 'Emilia Pérez'Friday, 25 October 2024
Jacques Audiard – creator of such subversive crime dramas and alternative romances as Read My Lips (2001), The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005), A Prophet (2009), and Rust and Bone (2012) – isn’t an aficionado of film musicals. But in blending one into his comic Spanish-language trans gangster thriller Emilia Pérez, the 72-year-old director has made the most beautiful aberration of his career. Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Anna Bogutskaya on her new book about the past decade of horror cinemaTuesday, 22 October 2024
You may have heard the phrase “elevated horror” being used to describe horror films that lean more toward arthouse cinema, favouring tension and psychological turmoil over jump-scares and gore. Read more... |
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