sat 03/05/2025

Interviews with leading figures from the arts

theartsdesk Q&A: director Leonardo Van Dijl discusses his sexual abuse drama 'Julie Keeps Quiet'

Pamela Jahn

"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."

theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Miguel Gomes on his latest exotic opus, 'Grand Tour'

Pamela Jahn

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.

theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer...

Pamela Jahn

Joshua Oppenheimer made his name directing two disturbing documentaries, The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), that dealt with...

theartsdesk Q&A: director François Ozon on...

Nick Hasted

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...

theartsdesk Q&A: Indian star Radhika Apte on...

Pamela Jahn

Radhika Apte has been acclaimed for her ebullient performance as a reluctant bride in Sister Midnight since director Karan Kandhari’s comic horror...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Raoul Peck, director of the documentary 'Ernest Cole: Lost and Found'

Pamela Jahn

Peck analyses his approach to the anti-apartheid photographer's work and to his methods as a political filmmaker

theartsdesk Q&A: Oscar-winner Adrien Brody on 'The Brutalist'

Pamela Jahn

The much-garlanded actor on what playing the architect László Toth meant to him

Interview: Polar photographer Sebastian Copeland talks about the dramatic changes in the Arctic

Rachel Halliburton

An ominous shift has come with dark patches appearing on the Greenland ice sheet

theartsdesk Q&A: Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof on 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig' - 'It became a question of self-respect'

Nick Hasted

The exiled filmmaker on authoritarian minds, reluctant radicalism and Iran's future

10 Questions for Mark Gatiss, writer-director of 'A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone'

Justine Elias

Gatiss explains why his eerie tale begins with its original Victorian-Edwardian author Edith Nesbit

theartsdesk Q&A: filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan and Galen Johnson on 'Rumours'

Nick Hasted

Archetype-bending auteur Maddin and co. discuss their new film's starry, absurd G7, autobiography and artifice

theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Payal Kapadia on 'All We Imagine as Light'

Pamela Jahn

An in-depth conversation with the director of the instant Indian arthouse classic

Interview: rising star Chloe Savage on the Arctic, outer space, and igniting children's wonder for the unknown

Rachel Halliburton

Beautiful books take you to worlds that are intricately imagined and a feast for the eye

Interview: Roy Haynes, Jazz Drumming Giant (1925-2024)

Nick Hasted

The jazz legend reminisces, from Satchmo to Metheny

theartsdesk Q&A: director Jacques Audiard on his Mexican trans gangster musical 'Emilia Pérez'

Pamela Jahn

The French filmmaker concocted an extravagant genre mash-up to confront the tragedy of Mexico's 'disappeared'

theartsdesk Q&A: Anna Bogutskaya on her new book about the past decade of horror cinema

Harry Thorfinn-George

In time for Halloween, the author discusses 'Feeding the Monster' - and why she thinks horror cinema has entered a new phase

theartsdesk Q&A: Alice Lowe on 'Timestalker' and what women rue through the ages

Justine Elias

The writer, director, and star inserts herself into the history of love

theartsdesk Q&A: young pianist Ignas Maknickas on appearing at the Roman River Festival and beyond

Rachel Halliburton

A rising talent who first performed with the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra aged 9

The Third Man rides again - 75th anniversary of Carol Reed's noir classic

Adam Sweeting

Script supervisor Angela Allen on Orson Welles and filming in a war-ravaged Vienna

theartsdesk Q&A: conductor Dalia Stasevska on her new album of contemporary orchestral music

Bernard Hughes

Finnish-Ukrainian conductor looks to bring the music of today to new audiences

theartsdesk Q&A: David Morrissey on (among other things) the return of 'Sherwood' and 'Daddy Issues'

Adam Sweeting

Liverpool-born actor reflects on a journey from Everyman Theatre to film and TV stardom

theartsdesk Q&A: violinist Braimah and cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, guitarist Plínio Fernandes, on their two Fantasia Proms

David Nice

String siblings and old friend reunite with Tom Fetherstonhaugh's inspiring orchestra

10 Questions for DJ-producer Dave Clarke

Thomas H Green

The techno don talks new music, Brexit, cars, Gustav Holst and much more

theartsdesk Q&A: Lucie Shorthouse is flying high with 'We Are Lady Parts' and 'Rebus'

Adam Sweeting

An actor's progress from Cambridge Footlights to 'Everybody's Talking About Jamie', a female Muslim punk band and crime-fighting in Edinburgh

theartsdesk Q&A: Viggo Mortensen on 'The Dead Don't Hurt', Westerns and the dangers of patriotism

Nick Hasted

The star considers romance in Durango, co-star Vicky Krieps, his outsider childhood and taste for adventure

theartsdesk Q&A: Matthew Modine on 'Hard Miles', 40 years in showbusiness and safer cycling

Adam Sweeting

An eventful journey from 'Full Metal Jacket' to 'Oppenheimer' and 'Stranger Things'

'I think of her as a proto-punk': documentarist Svetlana Zill on Anita Pallenberg

Nick Hasted

The co-director considers her revelatory account of the Stones' muse of mayhem

theartsdesk Q&A: Eddie Marsan and the American Revolution, posh boys and East End gangsters

Adam Sweeting

Versatile actor on playing John Adams opposite Michael Douglas in Apple TV+’s ‘Franklin'

theartsdesk Q&A: Marco Bellocchio - the last maestro

Nick Hasted

Italian cinema's vigorous grand old man discusses Kidnapped, conversion, anarchy and faith in cinema

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