With Antonia Quirke. Lambert Wilson, the star of a new bio-pic of Jacques Cousteau, The Odyssey, reveals why he could not lose enough weight to play the scrawny explorer, and why he ended up dreaming of bread. Diving expert and author Tim Ecott explains how, as well as inventing the aqua-lung that allowed divers to plumb the depths, Cousteau developed camera technology to show the world the underwater wonders he was witnessing. As part of the BBC's Gay Britannia season, Radio 4 is running a seri...
Aug 10, 2017•29 min
Antonia Quirke talks to Mark Gill, the director of a new bio-pic about Morrissey, England Is Mine, and considers the singer's influence on the movie tastes of a generation, introducing thousands of fans to A Taste Of Honey and many other British realist classics. Andrew Collins turns sleuth and picks out the film quotes in The Smiths' lyrics. Comedian Rosemary Fletcher considers the ways that innocuous-seeming romantic comedies can endorse behaviour that borders on the criminal, in her series Ro...
Aug 03, 2017•29 min
Antonia Quirke talks to director James Ivory about Howard's End, as it's about to be re-released in cinemas, and his working relationship with producer Ismail Merchant that spawned dozens of movies including A Room With A View, The Remains Of The Day and Maurice. Antonia learns the secret art and craft of ADR (or Automated Dialogue Replacement), as she joins a group of actors as they overdub crowd scenes in a costume drama. Pasquale Iannone discusses the extraordinary personal and professional r...
Jul 27, 2017•32 min
With Francine Stock. The director of Inception, Christopher Nolan tells Francine Stock about his first war movie, Dunkirk, and why it's his most experimental film to date. Bryan Fogel explains how his film Icarus helped to expose the truth about Russia's involvement in doping in sports. Comedian Rosemary Fletcher wonders why her gay best friends have never measured up to Rupert Everett in My Best Friend's Wedding, in her series Rosemary Versus The Rom-Com.
Jul 20, 2017•32 min
With Francine Stock. Warren Beatty tells Francine Stock about the making of Bonnie And Clyde in the year of its 50th anniversary, and why he thought Bob Dylan would make a better Clyde Barrow than him. Hope Dickson Leach explains why she set her family drama The Levelling on the Somerset Levels just after the floods of 2014. How does Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled compare with the 1971 original starring Clint Eastwood ? Larushka Ivan-Zadeh delivers her verdict. Documentary-maker Matthew Heineman d...
Jul 13, 2017•35 min
With Francine Stock. The president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, and ex-Sony head, Amy Pascal, tell Francine why three actors have played Spider-Man in the last 13 years, and why this new one, called Homecoming, is different. Amy director Asif Kapadia recalls the making of his debut feature, The Warrior, as it's re-released in cinemas. He tells Francine about what it was like filming in the Himalayas in contrasting weather conditions - from working in six feet snow drifts one week to baking he...
Jul 06, 2017•37 min
Antonia Quirke visits the house that Richard Burton bought for Elizabeth Taylor in a fishing village in Mexico, that's now a deluxe hotel. When the lovers conducted their affair out in the open in Puerto Vallarta, the paparazzi soon followed, and eventually the the small town was transformed into a tourist mecca. Director Ceyda Torun explains how she invented new technology to follow a herd of cats through the streets of Istanbul for her documentary Kedi. Antonia visits St Leonards, where King H...
Jun 29, 2017•46 min
With Francine Stock. As The Graduate celebrates its 50th anniversary, Tim Robey and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh have one word for us. Just one word. Plastics. Korean director Bong Joon Ho explains why he teamed up with Welsh journalist Jon Ronson to make a vegetarian epic about a race of super-pigs that will save the planet. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh returns to slug it out with fellow critic Simran Hans for the honour of getting their director in the A to Z of film-makers.
Jun 23, 2017•34 min
With Francine Stock. Nick Broomfield reveals why he decided to make a documentary about Whitney Houston and why her family refused to help him. Francine visits the Sheffield Documentary Festival, where she gets intimate with virtual reality, discusses the ethics of deceiving your subjects and learns about the ways to pitch your movie - with the help of film-makers Jane Gauntlett, Mark Grieco, Mette Carla Albrechtsen and Saeed Taji Farouky Historian Alex on Tunzelmann has made her name spotting h...
Jun 15, 2017•33 min
With Francine Stock Roger Michell, the writer/director of My Cousin Rachel, discusses the work of Daphne Du Maurier on film, from Rebecca to The Birds to Don't Look Now.
Jun 08, 2017•33 min
Antonia Quirke talks to director Patty Jenkins about warrior princess Wonder Woman and why it took her so long to arrive on the big screen. Clive James confesses to his fifty year love affair with actor Steve McQueen. Director John Landis waxes lyrical about Elmer Bernstein, composer of classic themes The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven.
Jun 01, 2017•31 min
With Francine Stock Francine talks to director David Michod about War Machine, his big budget satire on the U.S. military starring Brad Pitt, which is having its premiere on-line. He tells Francine why he really doesn't mind that it's only playing in a handful of cinemas. The debate about big screen versus small screen raged this year at the Cannes film festival when the logo of an on-line film and TV company was booed at a premiere. Film buyer Clare Binns and critic Tim Robey tell Francine if t...
May 26, 2017•32 min
With Francine Stock. The Oscar winning composer of La La Land, Justin Hurwitz, reveals why he wrote 1,900 pieces of music for the film and how he narrowed them down to just a handful. Critic Tim Robey and film buyer Clare Binns discuss the movies and the controversies at this year's Cannes film festival. Comedian Rosemary Fletcher reveals the various ways that her love life has not matched up to expectations raised by watching romantic comedies for the last couple of decades. Why, for instance, ...
May 18, 2017•29 min
With Francine Stock. Ridley Scott tells Francine why his new Alien franchise will be as big as Star Wars Director Francois Ozon explains how Brexit helped to get his latest drama Frantz made As the Film Programme's divisive A To Z of film-makers reaches the letter H, Briony Hanson reveals why John "Breakfast Club" Hughes means more to her than Alfred Hitchcock; while Sophie Monks-Kaufman picks an avant-garde animator over the master of suspense.
May 11, 2017•33 min
With Francine Stock. Jessica Chastain, the star of Miss Sloane, tells Francine why it's about time that we saw more women being ambitious, complicated and unlikeable on screen. Matthew Sweet discusses the career of a screen icon who was briefly bigger than James Bond - Norman Wisdom. The A to Z of film-makers continues with the letter G. This week it's French experimentalist Jean-Luc Godard versus English visionary Jonathan Glazer.
May 04, 2017•38 min
With Francine Stock Writer/director David Leland revisits Worthing, the setting of his classic drama Wish You Were Here, which immortalised the phrase "up your bum". William Oldroyd discusses his acclaimed low budget drama Lady Macbeth and why it plays with the conventions of how female characters behave in costume dramas. Heal The Living director Kattell Quillevere explains how a change in the medical definition of death has had an emotional impact on bereaved families, which is often overlooke...
Apr 27, 2017•39 min
With Francine Stock. Warren Beatty talks about his latest directorial outing, Rules Don't Apply, which he made 18 years after he directed his last movie. And reveals what he thinks now about the mix-up at the Oscars. Their Finest producer Stephen Woolley and Fiona Kelly from The Imperial War Museum take us through the little known history of women's roles in World War II pictures, as a season he's curated at the British Film Institute begins. Mohamed Diab reveals why his controversial film about...
Apr 20, 2017•32 min
Sarah Waters tells Francine Stock what she thinks of the Korean adaptation of her novel Fingersmith Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Tim Robey unlock some of the mysteries of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive Writer Shawn Levy reveals some of the real-life stories about the paparazzi that inspired La Dolce Vita, including an infamous striptease at a high society party that made headlines across the western world.
Apr 13, 2017•30 min
With Francine Stock. Julia Ducournau discusses her French cannibal movie Raw, which reportedly had audience members passing out in the aisles at a screening in the Toronto Film Festival. The life of Pablo Neruda - communist, womaniser and poet - is explored in a surreal detective story simply called Neruda. The film's director Pablo Larrain explains why there's never been a poet quite like the former Chilean politician, who was possibly murdered in his bed. In a week when two bio-pics about poet...
Apr 06, 2017•33 min
Linguist Jessica Coon advised on last year's Arrival. What conversations did she have with its star Amy Adams? We continue our A to Z of film with the letter E. This week it's Clint Eastwood versus Nora Ephron. Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu tells us why he's critiquing the corruption of his home country in Graduation. And we speak to Jenny Gage and Tom Betterton who spent three years filming a group of teenage girls in New York for their documentary All This Panic.
Mar 30, 2017•29 min
Writer Paul Laverty talks about his film The Olive Tree and the political impact of his Ken Loach collaboration I, Daniel Blake. Director Kleber Mendonça Filho tells us what happened after the cast and crew of his film Aquarius used the red carpet at Cannes to protest against the Brazilian government. Is cinema too left-wing? And does it have any political impact anyway? Toby Young, Maitland McDonagh and Will Massa discuss. And we reveal the results of our poll - will it be Claire Denis or Ava D...
Mar 23, 2017•30 min
With Francine Stock. Olivier Assayas reveals the secrets of Kristen Stewart's screen presence in Personal Shopper, and the connection between phone technology and spiritualism. This year's winner of the foreign language Oscar, Asghar Farhadi, who boycotted the Academy Awards ceremony in protest against Donald Trump's travel ban, tells Francine that the interests of the USA cannot be preserved by the humiliation of other states. Beauty And The Beast features the first gay character in a Disney mo...
Mar 16, 2017•37 min
With Adam Rutherford and Francine Stock.
Mar 09, 2017•58 min
With Francine Stock The controversial director of Basic Instinct and Robocop, Paul Verhoeven, tells Francine Stock why Isabelle Huppert agreed to star in his latest contentious movie, Elle, after he had been turned down by several Hollywood actresses. Tim Robey and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh recommend a few films for anyone wishing to have their own Isabelle Huppert festival this weekend. Director Kelly Reichardt explains why her films are light on plot and dialogue and often end in the middle of a sce...
Mar 02, 2017•32 min
With Francine Stock. Stephen Woolley, producer of The Crying Game, reveals why the film almost never got made and the lengths he went to keep the movie's famous twist a secret. Critics Tim Robey and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh talk about twists that work and twists that don't, without giving away the twist. Sandra Hebron and Ceyda Uzun slug it out to get their chosen director into The A To Z Of Film. This week it's James Cameron versus Jane Campion in the battle of the weepies - Titanic versus The Piano...
Feb 23, 2017•32 min
With Antonia Quirke. Director and agent provocateur John Waters reveals why his straight-laced parents paid for one of the most outrageous movies in American film history, Multiple Maniacs. First there was crowd funding and now there's crowd building. Antonia visits Newcastle's The Star And Shadow, which is being built by volunteers from the local community, who make up for in enthusiasm what they lack in experience. Could you watch a whole movie where feet are the stars ? Andy Robinson has just...
Feb 16, 2017•29 min
With Antonia Quirke Annette Bening reveals why she's rarely seen without a cigarette even though she gave up smoking long ago. Antonia meets Sylvette Baudrot, the only woman in film history to have worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanksi and Laurel and Hardy Foley artist Sue Harding demonstrates the tricks of her trade with the help of a cabbage, a melon and a couple of coconuts.
Feb 09, 2017•36 min
With Francine Stock. Ang Lee discusses the future of film and why cinema will become elitist. And why that's a good thing. Jeff Nichols, the director of Loving, on his real-life drama about an inter-racial couple who were arrested in Virginia for the crime of getting married. The A to Z of Film continues as two critics slug it out to get their chosen director into The Film Programme's alphabet of cinema.
Feb 02, 2017•38 min
With Francine Stock Danny Boyle revisits Trainspotting for its sequel T2 and reveals why he's been watching the original over his daughters' shoulders Rebecca Hall reveals how she got under the skin of a newsreader who shot herself live on air, for her real-life drama Christine. Film director Shola Amoo reports from the Sundance Festival as the British film industry tries to make inroads in the American market.
Jan 26, 2017•33 min
With Francine Stock Oscar winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker takes Francine behind the scenes of one of the great set-pieces in Martin Scorsese's classic gangster picture Goodfellas. And reveals why the director once considered burning all copies of the movie. The Film Programme begins a new series about cinema history that hopefully will change cinema history - The A to Z of Film. Two critics slug it out to get their chosen film-maker into the programme's alphabet of movie directors. This week, ...
Jan 19, 2017•32 min
