Antonia Quirke and Caitlin Benedict visit the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Lapland, where the sun shines for 24 hours in summer and films are shown every hour of the day. There they speak to Iranian exiles Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Marzieh Meshkini, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles, French auteur Arnaud Desplechin and Mark Jenkin from Cornwall. Along the way, they meet the people who make the festival possible, the volunteers, and find out why all the directors are expected to get into a sauna...
Jun 20, 2019•50 min
With Antonia Quirke Writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce talks about his Scrabble-based drama Sometimes, Always, Never and reveals why the film took 12 years to go from script to screen. Neil Brand continues his series on famous film scores that were last minute replacements with the story of Oliver Stone's Platoon and Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings. Voice coach Penny Dyer reveals what lessons she gave Helen Mirren to talk like the Queen, and helps Antonia rediscover her Manchester accent....
Jun 13, 2019•28 min
With Antonia Quirke Asif Kapadia, the director of Amy and Senna, discusses his latest documentary, Diego Maradona, and reveals why he's never wanted to touch anyone more than he wanted to touch the footballer's legendary left foot. Sir Christopher Frayling talks us through the soundtrack of Once Upon A Time In The West and how Ennio Morricone was influenced by a symphony of metal ladders. In the latest edition of Pitch Battle, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw pitches a novel called Swordspoint to a panel of...
Jun 06, 2019•42 min
Visual effects artist Paul Franklin on 1979's Alien, and its influence on his Oscar winning work on Inception and Interstellar. Francine Stock also hears from Alien's producer Ivor Powell, editor Terry Rawlings, who died in April 2019, and the film's director Ridley Scott.
May 30, 2019•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. Actor turned director Olivia Wilde talks about her debut feature a high school comedy Booksmart, and reveals why she asked her two leads to live together before they started filming. The Film Programme follows husband and wife team Geoff and Sarah Bird as they set up their first film festival, and take over the town of Skipton, showing movies on a barge, in the castle and down the pub. Film buyer Clare Binns and movie critic Tim Robey report from this year's Cannes Film Fest...
May 23, 2019•38 min
With Antonia Quirke. Director Brian Welsh discusses Beats, his acclaimed drama set in the 90s rave scene in Glasgow. He explains how to film a rave. You just hold a party and invite one thousand extras. Novelist Jonathan Coe enters the fray of Pitch Battle as he pitches an adaptation of Henry Fielding's Amelia. But what will the panel of Lizzie Francke, Rowan Woods and Clare Binns think of "Tom Jones for the Me Too generation" ? Choreographer and movement coach Scarlett Mackmin talks about her w...
May 16, 2019•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. Mads Mikkelsen reveals why his training as a ballet dancer and gymnast helped him to play a plane crash survivor in Arctic, which was shot in the frozen wastes of Iceland during the winter. Claire Denis discusses her controversial science fiction drama. High Life, which has left some audience members reeling in the aisles. Writer Anna Cale reveals the moment she recognised herself in a movie and the impact it had on her love life.
May 09, 2019•29 min
With Antonia Quirke. Writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz talks about Colette, the true story of the author who had to use her husband's name to publish her novels. And she reveals the difference between writing for the screen and for the stage, and why she really doesn't like handing in a movie script not knowing how it will turn out. Berlin in the 1920s was one of the most socially progressive pockets of the 20th century, and the movies were just as out there. NB presenter Caitlin Benedict uncovers the s...
May 02, 2019•37 min
With Francine Stock. Maria Djurkovic, the award winning production designer of The Hours, Billy Elliot and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, reveals the film that's been a major influence on her career, Time Of The Gypsies. She is joined by her creative partner Tatiana Macdonald, whose favourite film also happens to be Emir Kusturica's Balkan odyssey about the adventures of a Romany child. Damian Le Bas, author of The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain, reveals what he and his friends ...
Apr 25, 2019•28 min
Antonia Quirke reunites three cast members of Barbra Streisand's cult classic Yentl - Kerry Shale, Danny Brainin and Gary Brown. And in a radio exclusive, they sing the song that was cut from the final version. Super-fan Liza Ward explains why she has seen Yentl between 50 to 100 times and how she can remember every line of dialogue. Styx is an ethical thriller, in which a single-handed yachtswoman come across a sinking ship full of refugees, but is told by the coastguard not to intervene. Direc...
Apr 18, 2019•50 min
With Antonia Quirke. Writer Paul Laverty explains why he followed up I, Daniel Blake with a bio-pic about Cuban dancer Carlos Acosta. Yuli is directed by his partner Iciar Bollain, and this is their fourth collaboration as writer and director. They explain how they first met on the set of Ken Loach's Land And Freedom. Gordon Stainforth, the music editor of The Shining, reveals some little known facts about its famous score and why Stanley Kubrick was not the control freak that he's often been ma...
Apr 11, 2019•49 min
Jessie Buckley talks about Wild Rose, the story of a Country And Western singer from Glasgow, in which she stars and sings and writes her own songs. She tells Antonia Quirke what was it was like to reach the final of talent show I’d Do Anything in 2008, and why she gave up a career on the West End stage to go back to drama school. Author and screenwriter Ronan Bennett reveals the moment he saw himself reflected on screen, in the prison drama The Jericho Mile. Writer Iain Sinclair pitches a 1960'...
Apr 04, 2019•29 min
BAFTA winning actor, writer and director Jessica Hynes tells Francine Stock about Satyajit Ray's The World Of Apu; the third part of the Indian filmmaker's Apu Trilogy, released in 1959, and her Moving Imagine pick.
Mar 28, 2019•28 min
With Antonia Quirke Ralph Fiennes and producer Gaby Tana discuss The White Crow, their drama about Rudolf Nureyev's defection to the West. Ralph explains why so much of the film is in Russian and why he believes that if Schindler's List was made now it would not feature British actors doing German accents. Patricia Clarkson discusses her role as a cop in philosophical crime drama Out Of Blue and why people still come up to her and say "brush my hair". Writer and broadcaster Carl Anka tells us wh...
Mar 21, 2019•28 min
A film and poetry special with Robin Robertson and Hannah Sullivan. And in a radio exclusive, Sheila Atim and Toby Jones perform Bob Dylan’s Brownsville Girl.
Mar 14, 2019•34 min
With Antonia Quirke. Indie darlings Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck reveal why they decided to make a blockbuster movie, Captain Marvel. In the latest instalment of his series on movie scores that were last minute replacements, Neil Brand takes us behind the scenes of Chinatown. In a new series of Pitch Battle, The Film Programme asks writers to nominate a novel that should be adapted for screen but hasn't yet received the movie treatment. Poet Bridget Minamore is the first contender and her pitch is ...
Mar 07, 2019•38 min
Director Deborah Haywood chooses Danny Boyle's Trainspotting and tells Francine how she came to first see it and love it. Trainspotting producer Andrew Macdonald and "best baddie ever" Robert Carlyle join the conversation to reveal how Irvine Welsh's book became the iconic film. Main image: Rob Baker Ashton
Feb 28, 2019•28 min
Antonia Quirke and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh embark on a pilgrimage to Dungeness to pay their respects to film-maker Derek Jarman on the 25th anniversary of his death. Along the way, they hear from colleagues of the artist and activist, like actor and director Dexter Fletcher, costume designer Sandy Powell and composer Simon Fisher Turner.
Feb 21, 2019•28 min
With Antonia Quirke. Rosamund Pike reveals the lengths she went to in order to play the legendary war reporter Marie Colvin in A Private War. Oscar winning director Barry Jenkins discusses If Beale Street Could Talk, his follow-up to Moonlight and explains what the two films have in common. Neil Brand recounts the fight over war movie Battle Of Britain, when Sir William Walton's score was replaced at the last minute. And how he only found out when he read it in a newspaper. On the podcast, histo...
Feb 14, 2019•39 min
Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Tim Robey review Barbara Stanwyck's Mad Miss Manton
Feb 12, 2019•12 min
With Antonia Quirke Richard E. Grant talks to Antonia Quirke about his Oscar nominated role in Can You Ever Forgive Me ? and how his life has changed since he got the nomination. Joel Edgerton discusses his drama about gay conversion therapy, Boy Erased, which he wrote, directed and acted in. He reveals why he was nervous about asking Russell Crowe to star in it. Zing Tsjeng talks about the first time she saw herself reflected on the big screen and how Velvet Goldmine changed her life....
Feb 07, 2019•37 min
With Antonia Quirke. Award-winning cinematographer Seamus McGarvey takes us behind the scenes of The Greatest Showman, The Hours and 50 Shades Of Grey
Jan 31, 2019•28 min
With Francine Stock In a special edition called Moving Image, Francine Stock talks to writer/director Adam McKay about the cinematic influences on his political drama Vice, which received eight Oscar nominations this week. He reveals what former Vice President of the USA Dick Cheney thought of Christian Bale's portrayal of him, complete with fat suit.
Jan 24, 2019•28 min
A series on soundtracks that broke with the established form for films in their genre.
Jan 21, 2019•6 min
With Antonia Quirke. Director Josie Rourke discusses her film debut Mary, Queen Of Scots, and explains how one tweet about the film's historical accuracy became the thing that journalists wanted to talk to her about. Composer Neil Brand starts a new series about famous scores that were last minute replacements. First up is 2001: A Space Odyssey in which Stanley Kubrick famously scrapped the original soundtrack in favour of some classical hits. Writer, drag performer and film-maker Amrou Al-Khadi...
Jan 17, 2019•44 min
A series on soundtracks that broke with the established form for films in their genre.
Jan 14, 2019•9 min
With Antonia Quirke Writer Jeff Pope on what happened to Laurel and Hardy when they toured provincial theatres in the UK in the 1950s Comedian Lucy Porter discusses the duo know as the female Stan & Ollie, Byron and Garvin. Director Reinaldo Marcus Green reveals the reasons he felt compelled to make Monsters And Men, his drama about the killing of an unarmed African American man by a New York police officer.
Jan 10, 2019•28 min
A series on soundtracks that broke with the established form for films in their genre.
Jan 07, 2019•7 min
With Antonia Quirke. Timothée Chalamet talks about avoiding the cliches of playing a drug addict in his new drama Beautiful Boy and what happened to him after the success of Call Me By Your Name. Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos admits he wasn't that interested in historical accuracy when making The Favourite, his award-winning period drama about the court of Queen Anne with its sexual and political intrigue. Poet Rosalind Jana reveals how God's Own Country transformed her life. A truly unique mo...
Jan 03, 2019•28 min
A series on soundtracks that broke with the established form for films in their genre.
Dec 31, 2018•7 min
