Park Chan-wook has followed up his brooding revenge trilogy with a whimsical, pastel-hued romantic fantasy set in a psychiatric hospital. I’m a Cyborg premiered in the UK at the Korean Film Festival in November and on that occasion Park Chan-wook told us more about the ideas behind the film and gave us a tantalising insight into his next project.
Interview by Virginie Sélavy

Marjane Satrapi’s adaptation of her own Persepolis graphic novels deservedly won the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes festival.Full of life and irreverent spirit, this is a film that is simply impossible to dislike. The same can be said of Satrapi herself, who proved to be a wonderfully entertaining interviewee when we caught up with her during last year’s London Film Festival.
Interview by Virginie Sélavy

We talked to Catherine Breillat about her new film The Last Mistress, an unashamedly romantic costume drama adapted from a novel by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly. The confrontational French director, best known for provocative works such as Romance and Virgin told us about the dandies and femmes fatales that inhabit her new work and about her fraught relationship with the French press.
Interview by Virginie Sélavy

For much of the 1990s, writer-director Harmony Korine was readily identifiable as the enfant terrible of the American indie scene, a twisted prodigy with a penchant for drugs, drama and artful rebellion. Here, he candidly talks about poetry, faith and dreams.
Interview by Tom Huddleston

Having started as an underground film venue 25 years ago, the Other Cinema also became a DVD label in 2003, releasing the works of experimental filmmakers such as Craig Baldwin, JX Williams and Bill Morrison. Alex Fitch talks to co-founder Noel Lawrence and finds out more about their ‘mad, bad and rad’ aesthetic.
Interview by Alex Fitch

While the cast of Cannes winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is uniformly talented, Anamaria Marinca is utterly compelling in the role of Otilia, the young woman who takes on the burden of arranging the undignified, distressing back-street abortion for her friend Gabita. She tells us why it was so important for her to make this film.
Interview by Sarah Cronin

The expansion of ‘artists’ film’ has lead the Independent Cinema Office to put together a programme that re-assesses the influence of avant-garde, artistic cinema on the wider visual culture. ‘ICO Essentials: The Secret Masterpieces of Cinema’ will be shown at a special preview weekend at Tate Modern in London from 18-21 January before opening across the UK from Friday 25 January. We talked to George Clark, one of the curators, about the selection of films and the objectives of the project.
Interview by Virginie Sélavy

It’s been thirty years since the leaders of the Baader-Meinhof group Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe died in prison, and the ICA is marking the event by presenting a season of films that focuses on the role women have played in the revolutionary movement. We talked to Pamela Jahn, curator of the season, to find out more.
Interview by Virginie Sélavy

Thought-provoking, decidedly un-PC and formally inventive, Anders Morgenthaler’s first feature Princess mixes animation with some live action to tell the story of a young woman, Christina, who becomes a porn star under the name ‘Princess’. When she dies, her intense, guilt-racked priest brother August takes in her five-year-old daughter Mia and sets out to destroy all material starring his sister, which leads to a violent confrontation with unscrupulous porn barons. The Danish director discusses some of the most controversial aspects of the film and explains why he used animation to comment on sex and violence.
Interview by Virginie Sélavy

Director Mohamed Al Daradji had been living in exile in Europe to avoid persecution from the Baathist regime when the war broke out. In 2003 he went back to his country wanting to make a film about the plight of ordinary Iraqi people. He shot Ahlaam in Baghdad in extremely difficult conditions – not only did he have to work around curfews and electricity cuts but members of his crew were arrested both by insurgents and by the Americans, neither side believing that they were simply making a film.
Interview by Virginie Sélavy: