WILDsound Podcast
Telling stories through film and conversation.
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WILDsound's The Film Podcast

In each episode, the C.E.O. of WILDsound, Matthew Toffolo, chats about all things storytelling and film. Conversations with talented individual from all around the world.

Posts in Film Festival
EP. 1153 - Filmmaker Xuepei Hou (THE ADULTS ARE TALKING)

THE ADULTS ARE TALKING, 9min., USA
Directed by Xuepei Hou
Alex is a young graduate who is struggling to balance her life. She pretends to have it all together and breaks down all of a sudden when her mom tells her the secret she has been hiding for a year.

Get to know the filmmaker:

This is a semi-autobiographical story that happened between me and my mom years ago. It is the first time facing the fear of losing someone that close and the fact that she held that secret from me set off a scary awareness in me that my mother, is also a human who gets sick, makes mistakes, gets scared, and eventually faces the inevitable death. It is silly to acknowledge or make a sane judgment call when it comes to your nearest and dearest. To explore this unsolvable dilemma is what drove me to make this film.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1152 - Filmmaker Naomi Silver-Vézina & Vincent Blain (SPACEBOY (A FILM IN SEVEN SONGS))

SPACEBOY (A FILM IN SEVEN SONGS), 27min., Canada
Directed by Naomi Silver-Vézina
Naomi Silver-Vézina weaves the Montreal artist’s L’INDICE seventh album through a short film. At the top of a church tower, a man wakes up weakened and disoriented. He must find the strength to cross this strange place in order to find an exit. SPACEBOY explores loss of autonomy, loneliness and isolation through a quest towards self-acceptance and grief.

https://lindice.ca/

Get to know the filmmaker:

I’ve known Vincent, the film’s composer and star, for a few years since filming a podcast in his studio. When the podcast ended, I approached him about recording music in his studio, and he mentioned he wanted to make a film featuring his latest music project (which became the film’s soundtrack). He told me a little about the music’s inspiration, but left me a lot of space to come back to him with my own impressions and ideas for a concept. I was excited to have the creative space to explore a storyline that wasn’t too closely based on the lyrics, and to integrate different visual concepts throughout the film. We wanted the whole to feel cohesive, but for each song to feel like a tableau, each with its own mood and aesthetic.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1151 - Sonja Grace (SPIRIT TRAVELER: Looking into the Past for a Better Future)

Mystic Sonja Grace looks at the breaking point of two ancient cultures on opposite sides of the world and how their history can help us today. Her ability to Spirit Travel back in time gives a new perspective on the Hopi Indians from Northern Arizona and the Celtic people of England, Ireland, and Scotland. She examines why circular chambers like kivas and stone circles such as Stonehenge were built, the portals that are marked by these sites and the Demi Gods and aliens who influenced them. From the ancient past Sonja brings back hope for the future.

https://sonjagrace.com/
https://www.facebook.com/spiritualpsychicsonjagrace
https://twitter.com/sonjagraceguide
https://instagram.com/therealsonjagrace

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1149 - Filmmaker Melissa Hubert (BEATINGS ARE IN THE BODY)

BEATINGS ARE IN THE BODY, 16min., Canada
Directed by Melissa Hubert
Beatings Are in the Body is an artful exploration of how memories, pain, and a spectrum of emotions are stored in and continue to be carried by our physical bodies. Borrowing the project’s name from a work by Canadian poet Meaghan McAneeley, Beatings Are in the Body is a bracingly beautiful music collaboration between Montreal’s Erika Angell (Thus Owls) on voice/electronics, Róisín Adams (Hildegard’s Ghost) on piano/wurlitzer/voice, and acclaimed Vancouver cellist Peggy Lee. Together with multimedia visual artist Melissa Hubert, they represent an abstract narrative through four selections from their debut album premiering in the Spring 2023. Melissa Hubert is often mixing a variety of analog and digital mediums and her work encompasses a strong emphasis on the visual connection in combination with music, exploring unconventional methods of digital animation using organic materials to create a feeling of ‘supernatural awe’ within a digital landscape.

https://linktr.ee/beatingsareinthebody
https://instagram.com/beatingsareinthebody

Get to know the filmmaker:
When I was approached by the group ‘Beatings Are in the Body’ to create the visuals to their new self titled album, I was thrilled to work with multiple tracks. I now had an abundance of screen time to work with and was inspired to expand upon an earlier concept established in our first collaboration for the music video “No Not This No” which was the beginning of this idea of an abstracted internal pill-cam experience. Having more time, I was able to add to the story of what came before the internal portrait, a more elaborate view of the emotional and mental reach of this imagined tech, and to then show it was all just a dream – I was driven to make a ‘Wizard of Oz’ dream like experience of traversing the inner body, and waking with a new perspective.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1147 - Filmmaker Mark Schoen (STIGMA)

STIGMA, 3min., USA
Directed by Mark Schoen
The three-minute film STIGMA demonstrates that no matter what your race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity all human beings ae basically the same.
The three-minute film STIGMA demonstrates that no matter what your race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity all human beings ae basically the same.



https://www.sexsmartfilms.com/company/

Get to know the filmmaker:

The motivation for this film came from a telephone conversation I had with Liana Zhou, Head of Collections at The Kinsey Institute. We were talking about discrimination and how so many people are stigmatized because of superficial factors when we both agreed that basically all people are the same!

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1145 - Filmmakers J Brooke & Beatrice Alda (ROOMMATES)

ROOMMATES, 9min., USA
Directed by J Brooke, Beatrice Alda
After completing lengthy prison terms (for murder and arson, respectively), two women forge a strong bond within a nursing home catering to the formerly incarcerated. Creating a positive present tense in the wake of complicated pasts, these survivors cling to simplicity, routine, and each other.

Get to know the filmmakers:

I (Beatrice) have a strong interest in prison reform. I had read a local CT article about this nursing home that serves the formerly incarcerated – and they are the only ones in the country doing so- filling an enormous whole in the realm of post-incarceration issues.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1142 - Filmmaker David Tessier (THE FLOOD)

THE FLOOD, 1min., France
Directed by David Tessier
A political debate, broadcast live on a 24-hour news channel. As the speakers are arguing about social issues, water invades the set and floods the whole room. Nobody seems to notice …

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CqDHfO7O_AH/

Get to know the filmmaker:

I first received the script in 2017, 2 months before Macron’s first election. At the time, it was written for France Nature Environnement and they had 40K to produce it. We had to abandon the project because it was not enough, even with the whole team working for free. But I always kept the idea in mind and recontacted the agency five years later, a few months before Macron’s second election. It took six more months to raise the money to do it.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1139 - Screenwriter Gary Porpora & John Fichera (AMERICAN BREAKDOWN)

Watch the Screenplay Reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rbzGDWo548

Logline: At the mercy of an accelerating dementia, Jonas Flemming, aka, America’s Coroner–the state’s lead witness in yet another high profile murder trial–melts down on the witness stand, setting a psychopath free.

When the L.A. detective on the case reopens his investigation, Jonas becomes the prime suspect.

Get to know the writer:

A world famous coroner, scientist and murder trial expert, think Cyril Wecht–experiencing a rapid deterioration of his mind due to Alzheimers–breaks down on the witness stand, setting a murderer free. When the LAPD reopens the investigation, America’s coroner becomes the main suspect…

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1137 - Filmmaker Alejandro Pedemonte (LOOP (It’s a matter of time))

LOOP (It’s a matter of time), 15min., USA
Directed by Alejandro Pedemonte
Fausto wakes up in the middle of the night, with the news about his father dying. However, he refuses to go to him. Overtaken by his own rage, his decision causes a time loop that will eventually give him the opportunity to face his own forgiveness, loss, and life itself.

https://www.instagram.com/loopshort.film/

Get to know the filmmaker:

My motivation for making this film was the need to acquire experience while writing my feature film. Understanding the language of cinema from the conception of the idea to every step of the process to reach the final product was crucial. Additionally, it was very important for me to understand the artistic direction of actors in a film production, after having worked for many years as a director and producer in theater.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1136 - Screenwriter Denis Crampton (NO 3 Hollythorne Cottage)

Watch the Horror Screenplay Best Scene Reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik3-Lji9zPY

When a remote cottage is invaded by three young women and their psychopathic hostage takers, it’s malevolent spirit is unwittingly awakened with tragic consequences.

https://www.threeinonepictures.com/


You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1135 - Filmmaker Allen Cheng (WHAT A DAY)

WHAT A DAY, 5min., Thailand
Directed by Allen Cheng
Our world is busy, lonely, and exhausting. It is so common for us to go through a rough day, come home and lay on our bed with tears and sweats, then simply complain to ourselves, “ugh, what a day”.

https://www.instagram.com/allenuknowwhatimsaying/

Get to know the filmmaker:

The topic is something I can resonate with, and I’m sure most people do too. Just the idea of finding purpose(s) in a mundane life, because if everyday ends up being a “what a day”, then it eventually stacks up to “what a life”. I don’t like the sound of that, so I figured I would make something that portrays that.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1134 - Filmmaker Alex Alexander (BAPTISM)

BAPTISM, 8min, USA
Directed by Alex Alexander
The relief, the rest that comes from truth.

https://www.instagram.com/alexx.alexxander/

Get to know the filmmaker:

The inspiration and the motivation were very separate things.

The desire to be seen and known is intrinsic to the human experience, to be held in your truest most authentic form and understood in that moment, and I too am human. This is a self exploration, aided by the love and attendance and patience of a partner. The patience and gentleness of my partner, the way they often bathed me, the way they support whoever I am and guided me without ever forcing.

This was my first attempt at making a film, I wanted to do something close to my heart that I understood innately to iliminate any complications with foreign subject matter. This is actually a nugget of an idea for a much more complicated story.

The actual motivation was that the locations and team were going to become unavailable at the end of summer and I knew it was time to start moving on this idea!.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1133 - Igor Hnes (A MOMENT OF MOMENTS)

A MOMENT OF MOMENTS, 3min., Ukraine
Directed by Igor Hnes
Every family has numerous special, personal, and interesting moments that happen every day in which we can see love, and this is one of those.

Get to know the filmmaker:

Budget: I shot my first short film with a decent budget, having everything I wanted. So, I wanted to challenge myself with a low-budget story to see if I could pull it off. The result: $4 for the entire film and already 14 awards at various festivals.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1131 - John-Carlos Estrada & Zak Zeh (BARBETTE + FONTAINE)

BARBETTE + FONTAINE, 14min., USA
Directed by John-Carlos Estrada, Zak Zeh
A century apart, two Texas icons unite through art, resilience, and a shared legacy of self-expression and freedom.

https://instagram.com/barbette.fontaine

Get to know filmmaker John-Carlos Estrada:
The idea for Barbette + Fontaine came from an award-winning TV news profile I reported on for CBS Austin. After the broadcast story aired in June 2022… I was Inspired by a dream where the legendary Texas drag icon Barbette urged me to tell their story. We’re honored to provide Barbette with their final performance and take pride in doing so. Here’s the link to the CBS Austin story: bit.ly/3CeAXTG

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1129 - Grace Samson (CATS AND HUSBANDS)

CATS AND HUSBANDS, 7min., USA
Directed by Grace Samson, Barry Samson
We enter the story where two close friends, Fern and Marcie get together at a local coffee shop to celebrate a birthday. Fern has been going through two years of cycles of In Vitro, desperately trying to get pregnant but with no success. Her husband, Nick’s coping mechanism has been dressing up with the family Cat and taking silly pictures. Marcie jokingly suggests that Fern just book a vacation for herself and leave hubby with the cat. All this to help soften the reality that the birthday Fern celebrates today is that of a child she miscarried two years before.

https://instagram.com/catsandhusbands

Get to know filmmaker Grace Samson:
Being a thirty two year old woman, I started to see ads for freezing your eggs. I thought, wow I’m not ready for that yet, but interesting what a pressure it is to have babies as a woman at my age. I wanted to include a woman’s story that others who are in the same position could commiserate with and feel like they are not alone.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1128 - Director/Actor Emily Aleece Burton (ALL WE WERE)

ALL WE WERE, 20min., USA
Directed by Emily Aleece Burton
Olivia, a struggling artist and hopeless romantic, is blindsided when her successful boyfriend, Nico, suddenly dumps her. The two then reflect on all their relationship from two perspectives. For her, he’s a broken distraction she can fix; for him, she’s a beautiful mystery just out of reach. What happens when you fall in love with the idea of someone you’ve created in your head instead of who they actually are? Can you honestly say you knew all we were?

https://www.instagram.com/allwewerefilm/

Get to know the filmmaker:
I chose to write and direct this short film, ‘All We Were,’ after getting out of a toxic relationship of my own. I fell in love with a man who allowed me to feel safe and vulnerable for the first time only for him to then use that against me when I expressed how insignificant I felt to him. After months of therapy, I wanted to create something beautiful not only to take back my voice that I felt that he had dismissed but to explore both sides of the relationship to see where along the way we got lost in translation. People tend to fall in love with the idea of someone instead of who they are. The same goes for my lead characters, Olivia and Nico. In the end, Nico uses radical honesty to try and deflect any blame for the outcome of the relationship. At the same time, Olivia refuses to believe him as she has hung on to any breadcrumbs of love he’s ever given her as proof to herself that he does care. Neither one ever sees the other for who they actually were.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1126 - Clement Faure (CRAVATE)

CRAVATE, 11min., Canada
Directed by Clement Faure
When Mav wakes up from another mysterious nightmare, he decides not to take his medicine that day. Locked in a dark basement residence and haunted by his work, he wishes he would have a break. That morning, Mav doesn’t expect to face someone he might know.

http://fluxproduction.ca/
https://www.facebook.com/flux.production.ca
https://www.instagram.com/clement.faure.video/

Get to know the filmmaker:

I got the main idea for this film one morning 7 years ago. I woke up after a sleepless night and went to the bathroom to wash and dress. I started to look at myself in the mirror and as I was staring intensely at my reflection , I became aware of these two characters, these paradoxal life paths’s desires inside me. My conscious wanted something and my unconscious (reflection) was saying something else. That was also explaining why I was not sleeping, why I was so stressed and anxious in my life at that time: my two selves were not aligned.
Then I knew I wanted the story to take place in a dystopian universe, a near future but where the viewer would feel the underground confined environnement. This place is the metaphorical representation of the first character’s psyche obviously. Then the bathroom is the place where you wash yourself, you wash your sins maybe, you wash to make your mind cleaner, clearer. I knew I wanted these metaphorical aspects in the film that added another layer to the story.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1125 - Christine Sonvilla & Marc Graf (FLOWING – MY DREAM OF MORE FREEDOM)

FLOWING – MY DREAM OF MORE FREEDOM, 4min., Austria
Directed by Christine Sonvilla, Marc Graf
In “Flowing – My dream of more freedom” the river itself speaks to us about its dream of flowing wilder and freer again, thereby providing a home (again) to a diversity of species.

https://www.facebook.com/christine.sonvilla/
https://www.instagram.com/grafmarcphotography/

Get to know filmmakers Christine Sonvilla & Marc Graf:
Christine + Marc: The Dam Removal Initiative is an incredibly powerful tool in river conservation and restoration. However, it still needs more attention in the public and with decision-makers. That’s why we wanted to highlight how very much our rivers are craving for more freedom.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1121 - Robert Tiemstra (NO SLASHER HERE)

NO SLASHER HERE, 9min., USA
Directed by Robert Tiemstra
A woman comes home from work, only to receive an unsettling phone call. Does the danger only exist over the phone, or is there a masked killer inside her home?

https://instagram.com/the_timestar

Get to know the filmmaker:
The production for ‘No Slasher Here’ started with a New Years’ Day text message from me to Llenelle, my producing partner for this film – “do you want to make a spooky movie this year?” We’d worked together before, but never on a horror film. I was just finishing up the film festival run for my last film – a dystopian short called The October Martyr – and I was feeling the urge to do something scrappy & fun. Once I had Llenelle on board to act in something, I just asked myself ‘what sort of horror movie would I cast her in?’ and the answer came in the form of a When a Stranger Calls/Black Christmas/Scream style horror movie opening. The central conceit occurred to me while I was on a walk – instead of having a killer call someone, what if the ‘victim’ in this kind of setup picks up the phone to find another similar horror movie opening going on somewhere else? Then it became a puzzle for me to solve, a weird mobius strip of slasher movie suspense.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

EP. 1120 - Petri Puroaho (EnaMOREd)

EnaMOREd, 11min., Finland
Directed by Petri Puroaho
”EnaMOREd” (2023) explores the relationship between reality and dreams. Film shows what is it like to live in parallel world at the same time while coping with the real life events. What we carry in our minds eye can be different than what society assumes from us and even tries to conform us to so called normality when dealing with a persons love-life and relationship.

https://kipikipiweb.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/PetriPuroahoFinland/
https://www.instagram.com/we.sock.pp

Get to know the filmmaker:

Awareness, therapeutic process and time-efficiency. Being myself in a relationship that this film`s theme deals with made it a personal journey, just like my other works of art before. Since the day I started doing music and films, I have always based and rooted all my artistic interpretations and visions from personal experiences or wishes, so I could bring a little bit of hope and enjoyment to the world. I found and got to meet the love of my life just before pandemic started (2019). Then we were torn apart because of restrictions and other things for a long time. So we created a full life online. And last year (2023) we got to meet again. So that time apart was a life-changing experience and made me rethink and re-create my understanding of relationships in a new way. That transformation was so powerful that I felt I wanted to bring a little bit more awareness of that to the world through my film.

And by creating the film it became even almost a therapeutic experience for myself, how to express this phenomenon that I had experienced and lived through (and still living) but this time in film through visuals, music and a story. I also wanted to prove to myself that I could make enough of an impactful story-line with time-efficient length with the film. I wanted to tell so many details and it would have taken hours to explain everything. So I wanted to tackle the theme of the film and get to the heart of it with a few main ideas, and give the audience the chance to fill out the rest of the story in their minds, and the final impact of my film to them would be through their (audience) own reflections.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.