“Paris Paris”, an interview with director Isabelle Tollenaere

“Paris Paris”, an interview with director Isabelle Tollenaere

Belgian filmmaker Isabelle Tollenaere, already known and acclaimed at major festivals for her highly poetic hybrid documentaries exploring “the interplay between the rapid transformation of our physical world and the human experience of time and memory”, such as Battles (2015) and Victoria (2020), has just presented her first scripted feature film [https://www.kviff.com/cs/program/film/84/49183-pariz-pariz], a docufiction suggestively titled Paris Paris, in the Proxima Competition of the 60th Karlovy Vary Film Festival (July 3-11, 2026). This work – another beautiful and deeply moving expression of her fascination with places and their constant transformation in resonance with the individuals inhabiting them, and with what traces they leave when one or the other disappears – is indeed reminding, well beyond its title, of the mix of melancholy and tenderness found in another film where the “Paris” opening the title was not in France, and also bears echoes of another one which could have been called “Paterson, Paterson” – and generally speaking of the body of work of both the cult filmmakers to whom we owe these masterpieces –, while the framing of its scenes and the bareness of its setup crowded with existentialism often evokes a slightly less defeated Samuel Beckett, as humour and human connection really shine through in Paris Paris (with no comma between the two city names). As Tollenaere herself points out, in her first reality-based fiction work, the underlying themes of alienation, bottomless nostalgia for places which do not exist anymore, and suppressed longing, as only the present seems to count, are balanced by the friendship and warmth of the variegated community of displaced people we meet as they try to find their place in Paris, France – at the language class where the film starts, but especially between the naked walls (except for one adorned with wallpaper featuring the Eiffel Tower) of the abandoned flat where three most endearing characters Yi-En from China, Junior from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Hamzah from Palestine end up “finding a home with each other”. A REPLICA OF PARIS IN CHINA AS THE SPARK FOR THE FILM On what sparked the making of this movie: “When I found out there was a replica of Paris that was built in China, I was immediately fascinated by this and I also quite immediately had the idea to make a film based on the doubling of the same city, without knowing what it could entail yet.” “So I went to Tianducheng, which is where the replica of Paris was built, and I was really struck by this construction fever that I saw everywhere. Entire neighbourhoods were being demolished and there was construction happening everywhere, so there was a drastically rapid changing of the landscape occurring, and I also heard testimonies of people saying ‘when I leave home for a while and come back, I don’t recognise the place anymore. I can’t find my way home anymore,’ so this is when the themes of loss, disappearance, memory, and the precariousness of home first started erupting.” “And then I thought that maybe I could combine this with filming a Chinese community or a Chinese person in Paris, France but then I felt like I did not want to focus too much on the concept of China, but more on the feeling of foreignness and alienation and on this idea of having to leave home behind and trying to find a new home in this new place, so I came up with a story of the three men coming from very different parts of the world, each carrying memories of other cities with them.” A SCRIPT WRITTEN OVER TEN YEARS, SHAPED BY REAL LIVES On the incredibly precise and rich script, so elegantly carried by the thoughtful mise-en-scène and cinematography that it lets meaning emerge and texture build in the space between the lines: “As I was telling the Czech audience the other day, I actually wrote the first draft in the Czech Republic, where I came on a holiday, back in 2015, so I worked on it for a very long time.” “[It represents] many years of finding things in reality and bringing them into the script, and then again throughout the process of the casting and the repetitions that we did, during which they [the non-professional actors, here playing slightly different versions of themselves] brought their personal stories and personal objects, and [in the case of Mahmoud], who actually writes poetry, the poem I included in the film, after he recited it for me, and all these things sort of came together.” “Which was super fascinating, […] and I feel like it makes the script more alive and much more valid and true, and this is also what excites me in filmmaking: this exchange with the people I work with and what they bring to the film and how they help shape the film.” DISAPPEARING, WITH OR WITHOUT A TRACE About disappearing, with or without a trace: This recurring motif “speaks of the reality of their situation”, says Tollenaere, and she witnessed it first hand during her research on the ground. “People sometimes just completely disappeared, and I don’t know what happened to them and it really touched me a lot, so I wanted to include this in the film. It is a very precarious situation, and although there is a lot of lightness in the film […], I also wanted to bring out this reality of their situation, and the hardship of the situation and the inhumanness of the situation.” BALANCING HARDSHIP WITH WARMTH AND HUMOUR On finding the right balance between hardship and warmth: “I wanted to strike a balance between making a very political film and, on the other hand, [also having] a lightheartedness and a kind of humour in the film, and a playfulness – not to diminish this reality, au contraire, but actually to show these people’s resilience and their humanness.” The post “Paris Paris”, an interview with director Isabelle Tollenaere [https://www.fred.fm/paris-paris-an-interview-with-director-isabelle-tollenaere/] appeared first on Fred Film Radio [https://www.fred.fm].

“Hijamat”, an interview with director Nader Saeivar

After premiering his first feature (Namo, 2020) at the Berlinale, his second (The End, 2022) in Busan, and collecting the Audience Award in Venice with the third (The Witness, 2024), acclaimed Berlin-based Iranian filmmaker Nader Saeivar celebrated the premiere of Hijamat, his fourth feature [https://www.kviff.com/en/programme/film/84/50526-hijamat] as a director, Czech style, at the 60th Karlovy Vary Film Festival (July 3-11, 2026). The narrative pace and style of this contender for the Crystal Globe, set in Berlin amongst a rather instantly claustrophobic Turkish community presenting a boisterous mosaic of stifling religion-related conundrums, clearly bears the signature which has earned Saeivar international recognition as a screenwriter and regular collaborator of Jafar Panahi, especially for the latter’s 3 Faces (2018), which garnered the Best Screenplay award in Cannes, and of course for his more recent It Was Just an Accident, winner of the 2025 Palme d’Or, which they also wrote together. This immediately recognisable footprint certainly also has to do with the fact that Jafar Panahi produced Hijamat, and served as the film’s editor as well. A COMMUNITY’S DIVERSITY CRUSHED BY ONE RIGID AUTHORITY The whole progression of Hijamat hinges on the irreconcilable contradiction between the evident diversity (of generations, of relationships with traditions, of “ways of being a Muslim”, or of sexual identities) existing even within this tight-knit community and the monolithic rigidity of what is considered acceptable by the local imam, whose prescriptions everyone in the community constantly seeks, on each and every subject of daily life, anchoring the hold of this religious authority on the private sphere, which becomes inexistant, and obliterating the individual itself. In the case of the main character, Murad (Kida Khodr Ramadan), who takes it upon himself to support his brother Kerem, exposed as gay, the notion of sin which the imam systematically dangles over every situation manifests in the form of his stifling sense of duty, which clearly appears as a deeply internalised corollary concept from which Murad cannot escape, having chosen to stay repressed. BERLIN, AND THE MENTAL WALLS PEOPLE BUILD AROUND THEMSELVES On the apparent paradox of having a variegated community and one single inescapable guiding principle: “I was really lucky that my first destination, when I emigrated, was Berlin, a very cosmopolitan, multicultural city where you cannot say which culture is the dominant culture. Many Germans believe that they themselves are foreigners in their own city. When I arrived in Berlin, discovering this multicultural city changed my way of thinking and of seeing things.” “Then I realised that everybody, of all generations and ethnicities etc., had, all of them, one problem, and that’s the mental walls they build around themselves. You can see it very often in Berlin, everywhere. These walls are made of different materials, but all of them are really tall. For muslim communities for example, these walls are made of religion or superstitions, but for the Westerners, these walls are made of rigid laws and regulations and they think nothing can be changed, nothing can transcend that. So I decided that if I was going to live in Berlin, the first thing I was going to do is attack these walls.” THE MEANING BEHIND THE TITLE: DRAWING OUT THE “DIRTY BLOOD” On the meaning of the “hijamat” in the film: The title refers to a technique frequently practiced in many Muslim countries, which involves placing cups on someone’s back to pull the skin into traction, which results in a laceration of the skin with drawing of blood into the cup. Saeivar explains that as Murad feels that the community, whilst also offering protection, is controlling his life, dictating all the rules, “in order to overcome these rules, he changes his blood, takes out the dirty blood, which is the symbol of wrong beliefs, or outdated beliefs.” As the conversation then moves to the many interesting, key characters in the film, which includes the young, sleepwalking son (the first character to appear, in the very first shot), the screenwriter-director adds that “in many religious, if you don’t change these outdated and wrong beliefs, old beliefs, if you don’t remove that blood, these things can happen again to the next generations, repeat themselves, as you can see through the son.” NASTASSJA KINSKI AS THE GHOST OF GERMANY’S PAST Amongst the many motifs running through the film are the function of stories, painting, the Kosovar Muslim wife of Murad, Leyla (Nicolette Krebitz), and also the strictly peripheral presence of Berlin and Germany around this community, with the exception of one recurring figure – a disturbed German elderly woman played by Nastassja Kinski. “The reason why I chose Nastassja Kinski for the role of Margot, says Nader Saeivar, is that she represents the glorious past of Germany and German cinema, as well as modern Germany, the reality of today, which is that what was once working does not work anymore. [She is consumed] by her memories, by the fact that she lives in the past. This is exactly what religion does in the East. What religion does in the East, memories and the past are doing to the Westerners.” The post “Hijamat”, an interview with director Nader Saeivar [https://www.fred.fm/hijamat-an-interview-with-director-nader-saeivar/] appeared first on Fred Film Radio [https://www.fred.fm].

“A Happy Family”, an interview with director Jan-Eric Mack and co-writer and actress Anna Schinz

Director Jan-Eric Mack and co-writer and actress Anna Schinz met us during the 60th Karlovy Vary Film Festival (July 3-11, 2026) to talk about the former’s first solo feature [https://www.kviff.com/en/programme/film/84/49509-a-happy-family], A Happy Family, the first ever Swiss film to run for the prestigious Crystal Globe. This story of a struggling single mother, covered in debts and juggling several menial jobs which distract her from properly taking care of her two children despite her best efforts, which then leads social services to entrust the kids to a temporary foster family on the other side of the country, owed Anna Schinz the Best Actress Award at the closing ceremony. A PROJECT BORN OUT OF AN IMAGE SEEN DURING THE PANDEMIC On the origins of the project, Jan-Eric Mack: “It came by just by chance actually. We started doing research after we had seen, during the covid pandemic, people queueing up for food in Switzerland, which is really an image we hadn’t seen before. It’s not something you see very often there, poverty on the street, because it’s something which is mainly hidden, and that’s why we got into this topic, to find out who is affected and why.” A TITLE THAT INVITES REFLECTION ON THE MEANING OF FAMILY J.-E. M.: “For us, it was important not to have that title be cynical, but to think about what is a happy family and ask if that image of a perfect happy family really exists, because we firmly believe everybody has a different view on this topic, and there is no family without trouble or a second layer.” REFUSING TO JUDGE THIS STRUGGLING MOTHER, OR ANYONE INVOLVED Anna Schinz: “We tried to like capture the whole complexity of this subject, including on the side of the authorities – their work and what they do. It’s not about black or white, it’s not about good or bad, it’s not about blaming anybody: it’s about life, and people, human beings, making mistakes.” IT TAKES A VILLAGE: REALISING SHE CANNOT DO IT ALL ALONE J.-E. M.: “It was important that she realised that she is part of the solution in the end, after she brings her own child into a big conflict of loyalty by overstepping all these borders just to be close to them. We understand her need to be close to them, but at the same time, it’s kind of a selfish act. We always tried to understand and ask ourselves: ‘What would I do? Could I just stay at home and do nothing?'” “But actually we found out, doing our research, that everybody was searching for their kids, always! That’s what the officials told us, and even if it means becoming a criminal, they just want to have their kids back.” The post “A Happy Family”, an interview with director Jan-Eric Mack and co-writer and actress Anna Schinz [https://www.fred.fm/a-happy-family-an-interview-with-director-jan-eric-mack-and-co-writer-and-actress-anna-schinz/] appeared first on Fred Film Radio [https://www.fred.fm].

“3 Weeks After”, an interview with director Miroslav Terzić

Serbian director Miroslav Terzić has just premiered his third feature [https://www.kviff.com/en/programme/film/84/50402-3-weeks-after], 3 Weeks After, in the Crystal Globe Competition of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2026. This relentlessly cruel story about bullying, at once fascinating and hard to watch, implacable and extremely layered, deeply anchored in reality and allegorical in its very striking and masterful aesthetics, garnered the Europa Cinemas Label. The jury, unanimously “captivated right from the first shot and until the very end”, was impressed by the “remarkably strong and authentic performance” delivered by the ensemble cast, the choice of portraying the lives of “adolescents today through their own eyes, allowing their voices and perspectives to shape the narrative in a genuine and convincing way,” and found “Miroslav Terzić’s filmmaking stunning in every aspect of its craft.” “The film,” the jury concluded, “urges us to truly hear young people, be there for them and not look away!” A PROJECT BORN FROM A SINGLE SENTENCE, TEN YEARS AGO The project, Terzić explains, started over ten years ago, when Branislav Trifunović, the producer of the film (and actor, in the role of the maths teacher supervising the school trip next to the head teacher played by Tihana Lazović), and Vladimir Arsenijević, the screenwriter, started to work on this script about peer violence and called him. “We decided not to make some kind of docu story on one specific case,” says the director. Within the research material, he remembers, there was one sentence, from the mother of a boy who committed suicide, who said that the class went on an excursion three weeks after the fact, so “we tried to imagine what that excursion would look like.” NOT JUST BULLYING, BUT A VIOLENT SOCIETY However, continues Miroslav Terzić, “as we tried to find the best way to tell the story, we realised it was not just about peer violence, but about a violent society, about violence, and we live in that society. When you turn around, watch TV or Internet or whatever, there is violence all around us, and we were struck by that normalisation of violence.” “So we tried to show the audience that they are in the fire too – which is why there is a fire in the beginning, but no one is doing anything to prevent it –, that we are in the fire right now, at this very moment, but we are turning our heads [the other way].” THE RESPONSIBILITY OF ADULTS, AND THE FADING OF EMPATHY If the film certainly includes a commentary on the current young generation present in the film, it also suggests that the responsibility lies with the grown-ups, and with society as a whole: “They have grown up with the Internet, their phone is like a new organ for them, and they see the world through that, and what we serve them through that is disturbing, so we cannot expect… Somehow, empathy […] is slowly fading away from this society, [it’s almost] extinct, so I think that that we must teach them to feel again, not to be afraid to have real feelings.” “They are protected by their phones and live some kind of alternative life, so we must teach them to see violence and to stand up against it, even if it’s hard, and help whoever needs help. Because in every story about bullying, there are three sides, not two: there is the bully, there is the victim, and there is a third side, and it is the biggest one, which is that of the spectators, the people who are watching and do not interfere. It is them who let the bullies have all the power.” “[…] We gave them that power by not protecting the weak, the people who need help. […] I’m blaming society, because when tragedies happen, everyone talks about it and after three days, everyone forgets and continues on with their life, but this is not enough time to deal with that tragedy, [and it means we are not doing] anything to prevent a new tragedy.” A STRIKING, ALLEGORICAL AESTHETIC TO MULTIPLY PERSPECTIVES The striking aesthetics of 3 Weeks After also takes the subject to another, more abstract or allegorical dimension, beyond the Balkans angle or the generational and societal comment. “We wanted to tackle this topic from many different angles,” Terzić points out, “and leave it to the audience to decide how they choose to approach it. […] There are a lot of underlying layers and a lot of metaphorical and allegorical elements, and we break the fourth wall too, three times, in the movie.” We also discuss the moral reflection stemmed by the “they made me do it” argument, the animality the group reverts to, the implications of the inherent gregariousness of humans, the purifying symbolism of the cave where the guilt-ridden victim finds a refuge, and the longing for connection and embrace expressed in the magnificent ending. The post “3 Weeks After”, an interview with director Miroslav Terzić [https://www.fred.fm/3-weeks-after-an-interview-with-director-miroslav-terzic/] appeared first on Fred Film Radio [https://www.fred.fm].

“The Lion at My Back”, an interview with director Tonia Mishiali

Eight years after the premiere of Pause, her debut feature (after several internationally acclaimed shorts, followed by a few more after Pause), at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival (East of the West Competition), Tonia Mishiali was back at the Czech event 2026 with her second feature-length movie [https://www.kviff.com/en/programme/film/84/49934-the-lion-at-my-back], The Lion at My Back, this time vying for the Crystal Globe, and was awarded the Grand Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. We met the Cypriot director to discuss further this work, announced as the second instalment of a trilogy exploring the role of women in modern-day society, where the thoughtful mise en scène and the splendid, impactful cinematography actively accompany, in the many spaces where the action of this Cyprus-set story unfolds, the two female protagonists. A forty something local with a past who is fighting for the custody of her daughter and a young migrant who finds herself outside the door of the home where she was living on her 18th birthday – compellingly embodied, with all their nuances and contradictions, by Elena Kallinikou and Sokhna Diallo – as they struggle to find their place, and gradually develop a moving bond which ends feeling like home. A MOTHER-DAUGHTER STORY ROOTED IN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE On the background of the story, Mishiali explains that the idea to pair an ode to the mother-daughter relationship with the depiction of the situation of a young immigrant came from her personal attachment to both themes (being a mother and “a refugee in [her] my own country”), and was further fuelled by her encounter with women, mostly African, seeking asylum in Cyprus. We also talk about the way the film combines intimate close ups with an interesting treatment of space, or rather spaces (from safe to hostile, open to claustrophobic, inhumane to warm), including “the space that is contained within them”, which the director approached instinctively, with an awareness of her characters’ need to breathe, too. SHOOTING ON 16MM FOR A RAWER, MORE ORGANIC FEEL On the choice to shoot on 16mm: “I first met Manu Tilinski, my cinematographer, in Athens, because I wanted to work with a new cinematographer and so I met a few, and in my mind, even before I met him, was the sense that I had to do this film on 16 mm, and because there’s always budget restrictions and all that, I thought it was never going to happen, and I had no experience with film – I have only worked with digital –, so I thought if I am going to do that, I have to work with a cinematographer who has this experience.” “And I didn’t say anything to him and as soon as we met, as he had read the script, he went, ‘You know we have to shoot on 16 mm, right?’ and I said, ‘Thank you!’ Because the idea is that the film is quite raw, and rough, so I think this roughness that comes from film, the grain, that feels more organic.” CASTING THE TWO LEADS Tonia Mishiali explains how she went about choosing her actresses, and how Sokhna Diallo joined the project as a professional actress when the first actor Mishiali had in mind, a Somalian non professional, had to suddenly leave Cyprus for safety reasons. She also give us more details on how they found the right chemistry to give a sensitive depiction of the bond between Stella and Mariama, and evokes the male characters in the film. “MAYA”: THE THIRD CHAPTER OF THE TRILOGY On the third instalment of her trilogy, Maya, already in the works: “So the trilogy is really about women living on the sidelines and trying to find themselves and establish themselves in the world, and enjoy their rights and be prominent and be out there and be respectful – to themselves first, and towards each other – and get respect from others. So in general, it’s really about women rebelling […]. So I started with Stella in Pause, a 50-year-old woman who was oppressed and tried to find a way out… […]” “And then the third one is called Maya and it’s about a 30-year-old woman, so I’m going down in age, and again it’s similar – she feels different, she’s trying to fit in, etc. –, but it’s actually a genre film, it’s a fantasy film. So I am using another genre but again, it’s character-based, so it’s really about her finding herself as she inherits a house in the countryside and leaves the city to go there, and enters a patriarchal world of hunters in the woods, killing lots of animals, and finds herself attracted to this world, and meets goblins in the forest.” The post “The Lion at My Back”, an interview with director Tonia Mishiali [https://www.fred.fm/the-lion-at-my-back-an-interview-with-director-tonia-mishiali/] appeared first on Fred Film Radio [https://www.fred.fm].