The Film Programme

Platonic love story or patriarchal nightmare? Melody Bridges and Caitlin Benedict debate.

James Wilby remembers starring in Maurice, a story of the forbidden love between two men amid the stifling conformity of Edwardian England. As James Ivory's film adaption of EM Forster's novel returns to cinemas this summer Wilby looks back on filming alongside Hugh Grant and how the film was overlooked in Britain in in 1987. Rosamund Pike and director Patrick Kennedy talk about the art of phoning it in. From their short film, The Human Voice, which consists entirely of Rosamund on the phone for 18 minutes to some of cinema's must iconic on the phone scenes. Presenter: Antonia Quirke Producer: Kate Bullivant.

Daniel Kokotajlo explains how his upbringing as a Jehovah's Witness informed his debut film Apostasy. The drama stars Siobhan Finneran as a dedicated Jehovah's Witness, whose two teenage daughters begin to struggle to reconcile their beliefs with the secular world around them. Editors Emma E Hickox and Rebecca Lloyd discuss how they first got into the cutting room and how diplomacy is a key skill when editing a film.Jason Stalman, the lead animator on Wes Anderson's stop-motion film, Isle of Dogs, talks through the artistry and challenges behind creating Chief, Rex, Nutmeg and the other canine characters in the film. He also reveals how watching old acting performances from Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton informed the way the dogs were animated. Presenter: Francine Stock Producer: Kate Bullivant.

Lauren Greenfield exposes Generation Wealth, the consumer culture of excess, pornography, and cosmetic surgery for pets, and tells Francine Stock why she trained the lens on herself as part of her documentary.Director Leslie Harris explains why she never made another film after her award-winning, ground-breaking debut Just Another Girl On The I.R.T. 26 years ago. And why producers are reluctant to finance movies with an African-American woman as the lead.Composer Neil Brand reveals why the score for Spirited Away was a game-changer for children's animation.

Ethan Hawke tells Francine Stock about his role as a tormented priest in Paul Schrader's First Reformed, and why it's still rare to see a priest take the lead role in a Hollywood movieDirectors Beeban Kidron and Hope Dickson Leach discuss the problems of combining child care and film-making, and Beeban reveals why George Lucas thought she was a man.Perfume expert and film critic Dariush Alavi looks at Apocalypse Now and tells us what napalm really smells like (clue: it doesn't smell like victory.).

Oscar winning director Kevin Macdonald turns his lens on Whitney Houston for his latest documentary, Whitney, only twelve months after fellow Brit Nick Broomfield did the same with Whitney: Can I Be Me. Macdonald tells Francine Stock why his documentary needed to be made.Cinematographer Tom Townend takes us behind the scenes of Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here and explains why we should keep an eye out for the dead crows.Gavia Baker-Whitelaw ruminates on the history of straight actors playing gay men, as Paul Rudd and Steve Coogan are the latest stars to continue the enduring tradition in the comedy Ideal Home, playing a couple whose lives are disrupted by the arrival of a small child.Director Marco Bellocchio, whose career spans fifty years documenting the crises in Italian politics, explains why it's very difficult to make political films anymore.

Melody Bridges & Caitlin Benedict talk about the problematic fave that is West Side Story

Francine Stock enters The Bookshop with Bill Nighy and follows the trail of a father and daughter who live rough in a national park in Oregon. They're the subject of Leave No Trace, directed by Debra Granik, who reveals the true story behind her award-winning feature film.Neil Brand reveals how composer John Williams made us believe that Superman could fly, just by changing key.

Francine Stock meets Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett to discuss Ocean's 8 and their plans to tackle gender inequality in the film industry.Comedian Rosemary Fletcher argues that all-female reboots smack of women-only train carriages, and that women should have their own stories, not cast-offs from male stars.Film producer Trudie Styler discusses her directorial debut Freak Show reveals why she went behind the camera for the first time in 25 years in the movie business.

Critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Tim Robey on the Argentinian New Wave.

Francine & Caitlin don headsets, download apps, and get immersed at Sheffield Doc/Fest

Francine Stock talks to Ari Aster, the director of the film dubbed the scariest of the year, Hereditary. He explains why Mike Leigh was the greatest influence on his horror movie.Francine and Caitlin Benedict visit the Sheffield Documentary Festival, where they encounter film-maker Mark Cousins, enter two containers marked Hate and Hope as part of an installation by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, experience what it's like to be a soldier under fire in Iraq in a virtual reality piece called Mind At War by Sutu, meet Michael Smith and Tom Stubbs, the makers of Dawn Of The Dark Fox, the first feature film by an autistic director, and unravel the mystery of Three Identical Strangers with director Tim Wardle.

Francine enters The World Unknown To You and speaks to the creators of VR work Belongings

Francine and her plucky sidekick Caitlin choose Hope or Hate at Sheffield Doc/Fest

Francine Stock visits the archive of Richard Attenborough in the University of Sussex, which contains over 700 boxes of letters, photos, film reviews and a Chelsea shirt signed by John Terry. As it opens to the public for the first time, Richard's son Michael Attenborough reveals the memories that the archive has evoked, like his visit to the set of Gandhi, while archivist Eleanor King takes Francine through some of the vast collection.Louise Brooks launched a thousand haircuts with her idiosyncratic take on the bob, but historian Pamela Hutchinson argues that she was more than just a style icon.Listener Julie Ma presents her three rules for the depiction of East Asian characters that she'd like film-makers to follow.On the podcast: Francine Stock presents the story of Ida Lupino, the actress from Herne Hill who became a Hollywood star and a ground-breaking director, the only female film-maker working in the industry for a long while in the 40s and 50s.

Cult director J.A. Bayona tells Francine Stock why he took on the dinosaurs in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and why it's really a haunted house movie.Composer Neil Brand takes us on a tour with Taxi Driver, Bernard Herrmann's game-changing score for Martin Scorsese's masterpiece.Anna Smith looks back at Big on its thirtieth anniversary and reveals how the Tom Hanks comedy relates to the weird trend for body-swap movies in the late 80s.In another edition of Pitch Battle, listener Gerald Corvin pitches a bio-pic centred around the world of bare knuckle boxing in the 18th century, once the most popular sport in England, despite being illegalOn the podcast: the first edition of a new series, How Do You Solve a Problem Like... Grease, in which musical fans Caitlin Benedict and Melody Bridges ponder the universal question - can you love a musical that's politically incorrect, specially when you know all the songs and can quote all the lyrics ?

With Francine Stock.Nora Twomey, director of The Breadwinner, explains how an animation about life under the Taliban in Afghanistan was produced by Angelina Jolie and made in KilkennyOlivia Hetreed is president of the Writers Guild Of Great Britain that published a report this week which revealed that only 16% of screenwriters are female. She crunches the figures with Francine, and discusses the moment she woke up one day and wondered "where have all the women gone ?". She reveals why she has been stereotyped as a writer who specializes in costume dramas after penning the adaptation of Girl With The Pearl Earring, and why she would really love to write science fiction.Perfume expert and film writer Dariush Alavi detects the scent of film noir in his olfactory history of the movies and reveals what Barbara Stanwyck might be wearing in Double Indemnity to tempt Fred MacMurray.Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller joined an illustrious club when they were removed from the production of the latest Star Wars spin-o

With Francine Stock.Saoirse Ronan discusses her role in On Chesil Beach, as a young bride whose wedding night goes disastrously wrong with unforeseen consequences, and explains why Ian McEwan didn't mind her ditching some of his dialogue, even though he wrote both the novel and the screenplay.Critic Tim Robey and film buyer Clare Binns report on the classics and calamities they've witnessed at the Cannes Film Festival this week.The ever-controversial A to Z of film-makers ends this week with Z, appropriately enough. And Francine has another odd couple to choose between - the director of Hollywood blockbusters and a sixth generation Chinese neo-realist known as the poet of globalisation.

With Francine StockThe Artist director Michel Hazanavicius discusses his bio-pic about Jean-Luc Godard, Redoubtable, and reveals whether it's meant to be tribute or insult.Matilda Lutz and Coralie Fargeat, the director and star of Revenge, discuss the ethics of their feminist horror filmFilm buyer Clare Binns and critic Tim Robey take their pick of the movies on offer at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Award winning British director Andrew Haigh reveals why travelled to the southern states of America for his horse racing drama Lean On Pete.