Seventh Row Podcast

Toronto-based film critic Angelo Muredda joins Alex Heeney to discuss Brady Corbet's The Brutalist , a four-hour fictional biopic about a brutalist architect and Holocaust survivor adjusting to life in post-war America. The film is Directorial Choices: The Movie. It won the Best Director Prize at the Venice Film Festival, but we had a lot of issues with the direction and the film. Despite its shor...

**Are you interested in discovering extraordinary under-the-radar movies and discussing them with a community of film lovers?** **Sign up for the Reel Ruminators (Free Trial), by visiting https://email.seventh-row.com/trial . The discussion will happen on October 13 at 12 p.m. EST. ** Toronto-based film critic Angelo Muredda joins Alex Heeney to discuss one of the biggest directorial swings at TIF...

**To sign up for the Reel Ruminators (Free Trial), visit https://email.seventh-row.com/trial .** In this episode, Alex Heeney discusses the new independent British film The Old Man and the Land, which was just released in the U.K. The film is told almost entirely as a series of voicemails from a farmer's two adult children (played by Rory Kinnear and Emily Beecham).  On screen, we only ever see th...

**To sign up for the Reel Ruminators (Free Trial), visit https://email.seventh-row.com/trial .** In this episode of the TIFF 2024 season, Alex is joined by Toronto-based film critic Angelo Muredda to discuss one of our most anticipated titles of the festival: Luca Guadagnino's Queer.  The film adapts the Williams S. Burroughs novel of the same name. Daniel Craig stars as William Lee, Burroughs' al...

In this episode of the TIFF 2024 season, Alex discusses two films starring Ralph Fiennes: Uberto Pasolini's  The Return and Edward Berger's   Conclave . In them, Fiennes respectively plays Odysseus at the end of his journey and a cardinal in charge of the process for selecting a new pope. The episode is spoiler-free. About the TIFF 2024 season : In the TIFF 2024 season, Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney...

In this episode of the TIFF 2024 season, Alex discusses three films about bicultural daughters and their absent fathers. Fittingly, the films are about identity, the role of the father-daughter relationship, and what it may mean for both father and daughter for that relationship to be severed.  To discuss the films' differing cultural contexts, I quote from interviews with the filmmakers, who shar...

In this episode of the TIFF 2024 season, Alex discusses two new films from masters of British social realism: Andrea Arnold's  Bird and Mike Leigh's  Hard Truths . Bird had its world premiere at Cannes in May;  Hard Truths had its world premiere at TIFF. Alex finds similarities in subject matter and storytelling approach between the films, including the very strong performances from some Seventh R...

In this episode of the TIFF 2024 season, Alex discusses three films from around the world that take place within the world of sports but aren't really  about sports.  Alex finds common ground in how the films are shot and tell stories, often through gestures and blocking rather than dialogue. These films are: Leonardo van Dijl's Julie Keeps Quiet – Belgium/Sweden (sales title) Frida Kempff's The S...

In this episode of the TIFF 2024 season, Alex discusses the four Palestinian films at this year's festival. These films are: No Other Land (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor) - Norway/Palestine To a Land Unknown  (Mehdi Fleifel) - Germany, France, United Kingdom, Greece, Netherlands, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia Happy Holidays (Scandar Copti) - Germany, France, Italy, Palesti...

The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) kicks off on Thursday, September 5, and Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney will cover it with a series of podcast episodes. In this episode, Alex introduces the podcast season and explains why this season is for you and whether or not you're attending TIFF this year. I'll explain what to expect from this podcast season and why TIFF and our coverage are...

Announcement:  I'm covering TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival! Sign up to receive my five essential tips for the film adventurer seeking a fantastic festival experience , whether at TIFF (or any other festival) at email.seventh-row.com/tiff24 . --- Alex Heeney interviews writer-director (and Seventh Row fan!) India Donaldson about her debut feature,  Good One . Inspired by Seventh Row...

Toronto film critic Nathalie Atkinson joins Alex Heeney to discuss their latest obsession -- Amazon Prime's swashbuckling fantasy series, My Lady Jane -- and why we can't stop thinking about it. From husbands that are sometimes horses, to intimacy coordination by Ita O'Brien (Normal People), to an incredible cast (Edward Bluemel!), the show is a whole lot of fun with impressive craft behind it. Th...

Announcement:  Our new membership, Reel Ruminators: A Movie-of-the-Month Discussion Club is now open for new members in August! Doors close on August 9 at 11:59 p.m. EST. Once doors close, we won't be opening them again until October. Find out more and reserve your spot by clicking here. --- Alex Heeney interviews South African director and co-writer Oliver Schmitz about the 4K restoration of his...

I've just launched a Reel Ruminators: A Movie-of-the-Month discussion Club, a new membership for movie lovers to watch amazing movies and meet other film lovers to discuss them. In this trailer, I will tell you more about Reel Ruminators and help you figure out whether it's a good fit for you. Doors are currently open to join, and doors close Thursday, July 4 at 11:59 p.m. EST for July's Reel Rumi...

Announcement:  Our new membership, Reel Ruminators: A Movie-of-the-Month Discussion Club is now open for new members in July! Doors close on July 4 at 11:59 p.m. Find out more and reserve your spot by clicking here. ---- Alex Heeney interviews legendary Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland about her Venice Jury Prize-Winning film,  Green Border . Holland discusses why she wanted to make the film, ho...

Alex Heeney interviews co-directors Alex Thompson and Kelly O'Sullivan whose new film Ghostlight was a hit at Sundance. Ghostlight is the story of middle-aged construction worker Dan (Ian Keiser) who discovers that theatre and Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet are excellent outlets for working through his complicated feelings of grief, guilt, and anger. >> Subscribe to our FREE newsletter for updates o...

In this episode, we discuss Luca Guadagnino's new film Challengers (2024), which stars Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Seventh Row favourite Josh O'Connor as competitive tennis players and romantic rivals.  Film critic and Katherine Hepburn obsessive Andrew Kendall joins host Alex Heeney for the episode. We are both Josh O'Connor super-fans and liked the film. But we had a lot of issues with it. We discu...

Director Uberto Pasolini and James Norton discuss avoiding sentimentality and collaborating on their film Nowhere Special (2020).  Seventh Row Host Alex Heeney interviews them and offers her take on why this heartwarming and heartbreaking tearjerker is worth your time. James Norton plays John, a 35-year-old window cleaner and single dad who is dying of an unspecified disease. To prepare for the fu...

Emerald Fennell's new film,  Saltburn , comes out today, so we're re-releasing our 2021 episode about two very different depictions of rape culture from 2020: Fennell's revenge thriller  Promising Young Woman and Kitty Green's The Assistant , a portrait of a young woman working in a misogynistic office environment. This is a landmark episode of the podcast, which kickstarted a series of episodes o...

In the fifth and final episode of our Creative Nonfiction Film podcast season , Alex Heeney talks to Penny Lane about her experimentations with documentary form in Confessions  of a Good Samaritan. The film is a trip inside Penny's brain as she goes through the stressful process of anonymously donating her kidney and investigates why kidney donations are necessary. Lane weaves almost all of the te...

In the fourth episode of our Creative Nonfiction Film podcast season ,  Alex Heeney talks to Sam Green about 32 Sounds and his work exploring the possibilities of his work that he describes as "live documentaries". These are part locked footage, part live performance, usually including a live band on stage performing the film's music. On this episode, we give some background on Sam Green's work in...

In the third episode of our Creative Nonfiction Film podcast season , Philippe Falardeau discusses Lac-Mégantic: This is Not An Accident is a four-part documentary series about the catastrophic 2013 trainwreck in Lac-Mégantic, its inevitability, the aftermath, and the government failure to change safety requirements to avoid another "accident" in future. Lac-Mégantic had its world premiere at the...

In the second episode of our Creative Nonfiction Film podcast season , Sophie Fiennes discusses The Four Quartets and how she approaches documenting live performance on screen. In  The Four Quartets , she captures the stage play of the same name, directed by and starring her brother, actor Ralph Fiennes. For the production, Ralph Fiennes adapted the T.S. Eliot poem for the stage — which was never...

In the first episode of our Creative Nonfiction Film podcast season , Alex Heeney previews what to expect in this five-episode season and discusses what is creative nonfiction film. Click here to read the episode show notes. You will also find an AI-generated transcript in the show notes. Get the tote bag with the Céline Sciamma quote "Cinema is the only art form ever where you share somebody else...

In honour of Justine Triet's historic Palme d'Or win, we are republishing our in-depth discussion of her two most recent films for free. This episode was originally released on September 8, 2020 as episode 56. This week on the podcast we look at two of Justine Triet's feature films,  In Bed With Victoria (2016) and Sibyl (2019). Both films are non-judgemental character studies of career women in t...