Afleveringen
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City of God (2002), Fernando Meirelles' crime drama set in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, earned four Academy Award nominations (Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing) and won none, losing three of them to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Recorded on a working farm outside Nottingham, chickens included, Seb and the Dead Duck team cover why the film was shot in Cidade Alta instead of the real Cidade de Deus, how Meirelles cast non-professional actors from the neighbourhood and trained them for months, and the improvised moments that stayed in the final cut, including the hot-water scene and the opening chicken chase. They dig into its record-breaking run in Brazilian cinemas, its influence on later directors, the Goodfellas and Tarantino comparisons, and Sean Baker's use of non-actors years later.
Dead Duck Film Club's next screening: City of God, 25 July at the Bonington Theatre in Arnold, with the Brazilian Cultural Center.
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Julia Ducournau's third feature Alpha premiered at Cannes 2025, four years after Titane won her the Palme d'Or. France, 2025. Stars Mélissa Boros, Golshifteh Farahani, Tahar Rahim, and Emma Mackey. The film currently sits at 5.9 on IMDB and 57% on Rotten Tomatoes after a divisive Cannes reception.
Seb is joined by Bruna and George to cover a 13-year-old getting a tattoo at a party, the in-universe AIDS pandemic that turns the sick into marble statues, the uncle who may or may not still be alive, and the generational trauma threading mother to daughter to brother. They argue over whether the 5.9 on IMDB is fair, why Cannes critics walked out calling it structureless, where Alpha sits next to Raw and Titane, and what David at Severin Films told them about the festival reception. The conversation also touches on We Need to Talk About Kevin, Ginger Snaps, Oppenheimer, and Ari Aster's run from Hereditary and Midsommar to Beau Is Afraid, Eddington, and The Strange Thing About the Johnsons. Sidebar covers Blue Heron, which Seb and Bruna caught on the festival circuit.
Spoilers throughout.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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The Last Viking (2025) is the new film from Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen, starring Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas. Jensen's sixth film with both actors broke the Danish box office on opening weekend with 127,000 tickets sold, the biggest Danish live-action opening since 2018. UK release: June 2026.
Seb is joined by Bruna, George and Mark for a full spoiler discussion. They cover the bank-robber-and-brother setup, the brother who thinks he is John W. Lennon, the Beatles-patients band, and why the funniest first act of the year falls apart in a second half that saves its worst violence for its two female characters. They break down the Viking parable that frames the film, the director's interview about humour and "some groups," whether the film reads as a dog whistle on trans rights, and the question of casting a neurotypical actor in a neurodivergent role.
Warm-up watches: André Is an Idiot, Hokum, Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Kick-Ass, Tuner, and Julia Donaldson's Gruffalo.
Films recommended at the end: Another Round, Pusher, After the Hunt.
Spoilers throughout.
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When Evil Lurks (2023) is an Argentinian supernatural horror written and directed by Demian Rugna (Terrified). It premiered at TIFF's Midnight Madness, won Best Feature at Sitges (the first Latin American film to do so in 56 years), and holds a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 6.9 on IMDB.
Seb and George talk through Rugna's rejection of religious horror. No crucifixes, no holy water, no prayers. They cover the "cleaner" system and government neglect, the COVID parallels in characters who know the rules but refuse to follow them, and whether the second half's exposition undercuts the mystery. The dog scene, the axe scene, the autistic child's possession through vocal tics (calling Azrael), and the film's subtitle translation all come up. George gives it high marks but wanted a stronger ending. Seb lands on three to three and a half stars.
Films mentioned: Terrified, Bring Her Back, The Wailing, The Conjuring, Funny Games, Possum, The Devil Wears Prada 2, The Devil Inside.
Spoilers throughout.
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Ghost in the Shell (1995), directed by Mamoru Oshii and based on Masamune Shirow's manga, was released simultaneously in Japan, the UK, and the US, unusual for anime at the time.A quiet theatrical run in the West, a cult hit on VHS, and then a direct influence on The Matrix: the Wachowskis showed it to Warner Bros executives when pitching their film.
Seb and George cover the 82-minute runtime and what Oshii stripped from themanga to get there. They discuss Major's identity crisis, the Puppet Master claiming asylum as a living being, and how both connect to the current AGI race. Covered: the garbage men subplot and manufactured memories, Oshii fighting for the city wandering sequences, and the link to Arthur Koestler's 1967 text The Ghost in the Machine. George argues the merge ending is a metaphor for evolution: old generation dies, new generation inherits. The 2017 remake with Scarlett Johansson gets a full run-through: what gets lost when you gut the philosophy for action. Other films mentioned: Akira, The Matrix, Blade Runner (1982), Videodrome.
Warm-up: George on Trust Me, False Prophet (FLDS church documentary, four episodes); Seb on The AI Doc or How I Became an Apocaloptimist 2026. Spoilers throughout. Subscribe, leave a review, and share with a fellow film lover. Just by being here, you are part of the club.
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Funny Games (1997), directed by Michael Haneke, is an Austrian home invasion film that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Comparisons made to Speak No Evil (original Danish) and The Coffee Table.
Films mentioned: Benny's Video, The Piano Teacher, Creep, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Hostel, Kill Bill.
Warm-up: Ken Russell's The Devils (1971), Suspiria (2018 remake, Dakota Johnson), Shin Godzilla, and Kristen Stewart's Chronology of Water.
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Audition (1999), directed by Takashi Miike, is a Japanese horror film based on Ryu Murakami's 1997 novel of the same name. Released the same year as Ring, it holds 81% from critics and 80% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. The film caused walkouts and audience illness at its original festival screenings in Dublin and the US. Eihi Shiina plays Asami, a role she and Miike partly developed through improvisation during production, including the film's most iconic scene.
Seb, Bruna, and George discuss the film's two-phase structure, the audition scene as a lens on male fantasy vs the reality of women, why a film from 1999 still maps onto the male loneliness epidemic and trad wife discourse, Asami's white costuming as a death symbol in Japanese culture, the ambiguity of the dream and flashback sequences.
Films mentioned include Memories of Murder, Body Double, The Coffee Table, Ichi the Killer, The Handmaiden, Kill Bill, Possession, Censor, and Nora.
Spoilers throughout.
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This week Seb and Mark are in Bad City, talking about Ana Lily Amirpour's 2014 debut A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. The Iranian vampire western. They dig into what makes this film so unlike anything else in the genre, from its punk iconography rooted in a chador and a skateboard, to its black and white California-shot vision of a fictional Iran packed with all the things you would never expect from an Iranian film. Prostitutes, queer characters, nightclubs, a vampire on a skateboard. The whole lot.
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Akira (1988), directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, Japan. Based on Otomo's six-volume manga series. One of the most widely referenced animated films of all time, credited with opening the Western market to Japanese animation. Its 1989 US release led to the formation of a dedicated anime distribution company for the West.
Sebastien and Markc cover the plot's structural limitations (six volumes condensed into one film, large cast, multiple unresolved threads), the film's political content around youth and power, the animation's technical standard relative to its 1988 contemporaries including early Simpsons and Looney Tunes, and why those story issues don't affect his overall verdict.
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Seb and Mark dig into The Stranger (2026), François Ozon's new adaptation of Albert Camus' L'Étranger (1942), a book long considered unadaptable, which Visconti already tried to film in 1967. Starring Benjamin Voisin as Meursault, Rebecca Marder as Marie Cardona, Denis Lavant as Salamano, and Pierre Lottin as Raymond.
Set in 1930s French-colonial Algeria, the film follows an indifferent Frenchman whose life is reshaped by his mother's funeral and a senseless act of violence on a beach.
The conversation covers Ozon's decision to strip out the book's first-person narration, Benjamin Voisin's performance, the film's real argument against capital punishment, how race and colonialism enter the courtroom, and why The Stranger and A Clockwork Orange are asking the same question from opposite ends.
Spoilers flagged.
Sidebar watches: Kristoffer Borgli's The Drama, Coherence (2013), and Seb's first time with A Clockwork Orange.
They close by watching Ozon's six-minute student short Photo de Famille (1988) together, his brother murders the family for a photo.
Recommendations: Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure, Ozon's By the Grace of God, and French picks Polisse (2011) and In Safe Hands (2018).
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Two films, two very different ways of being trapped, and two answers to what good adaptation actually looks like.
Infernal Affairs (2002, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, Hong Kong) holds 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, 95% audience approval, and made more money in China that year than Harry Potter 2 and Spider-Man. Exit 8 (2024, Kenji Kawamura, Japan), adapted from a viral solo-dev indie game, has grossed 41 million worldwide with 94% critics and a telling 6.5 on IMDB.
Seb and Marc dig into why Infernal Affairs shoots for melodrama so hard it wraps back around to emotional truth, what the Sergeant Dignam ending does that the original never could, and how a story about two moles is really about two people trapped in a lie they cannot escape.
On Exit 8: the subway loop as a metaphor for someone paralysed by indecision, uncanny valley horror that works precisely because it stays toned down, and what game adaptations get wrong when they hew too close to the source.
Spoilers. Strong opinions. A brief detour into 80s power ballads. Also in the warm-up: Project Hail Mary, A Clockwork Orange, and Hoppers.
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Jermaine Edwards is the cinematographer behind My Father's Shadow (2025), directed by Akinola Davis Jr , the first Nigerian film ever selected for Cannes, where it received a Caméra d'Or special mention. He also shot Ish, which screened at Venice the same year. Both films shot on film.
In this interview, Jermaine walks us through three months of prep in Lagos, the Harmattan light that shapes so much of what you see on screen, and how production designers Jen and Pablo built the world in front of his camera. He talks about what it means to shoot 16mm in Nigeria and wait four days to see your rushes, why he stays away from the edit, and the visual grammar he and Akinola developed, tighter framing as the boys arrive, widening as their world opens up.
He also reflects on 17 years in the industry before landing his first feature, the Bradford Young moment that made him believe he belonged here, and why Ish is in black and white. And George tells him live on the call that he was nominated for two cinematography awards, not one.
This interview drops alongside our full My Father's Shadow discussion with Seb, George, and Mark.
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My Father's Shadow (2025) is a Nigerian drama written and directed by brothers Akinola Davis Jr. and Wales Davis. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in Un Certain Regard as the first Nigerian film ever selected for the official Cannes program, won the BAFTA for Outstanding Debut, the Gotham Award for Best Breakthrough Director and Best Lead Performance, and was the UK's official submission for the Academy Awards. Shot entirely on Kodak Super 16mm in Lagos by cinematographer Jermaine Knute Edwards. Stars Sopé Dirisu, Godwin Egbo, and Shibuike Marvelous Egbo. 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.
On the day of Nigeria's 1993 presidential election — later annulled by the military — two young brothers spend a single day in Lagos with their largely absent father.
Sébastien, George, and Mark discuss the twist that reframes the whole film, Sopé Dirisu's performance, why shooting on 16mm was the right call, and how the Davies brothers wrote this as the day they never actually got to have with their own father. They also cover the political backdrop, the absent mother, Sean Baker comparisons, and why the kid actors feel completely real. Spoilers included.
Warm-up: Ish, Cutting Through Rocks, Alabama Solution, Project Hail Mary, Jurassic World Rebirth.
A separate interview with cinematographer Jermaine Knute Edwards is out now on all platforms.
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Séb and Derry Shilitto go deep on Gareth Evans' The Raid: the $1M Indonesian action masterpiece that launched pencak silat onto the global stage and started with a Welsh filmmaker falling in love with a delivery man who happened to be a martial arts genius.
We get into Mad Dog's terrifying screen presence, the corridor sequence, the cameraman literally jumping through the floor with the actors, why the grimy apartment block is as much a character as Rama, and the strangest behind-the-scenes fact you'll hear all year: Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park scored the US release, with Chino Moreno of Deftones on vocals.
Expect strong opinions and full agreement that this is peak cinema.
Then David Hinds joins, director of the newly released Nottingham folk horror Black Goat, to break down how he shot a feature film for £10k in minus three degree woods, with a crew working for free, a lead actor who'd never been on camera before, and a handmade prop book with every page stitched by hand.
We cover the void sequences shot at Blood Brothers Studios, the practical effects that had to lose an exploding eyeball to stay on budget, the cult sacrifice scene nobody saw coming, and how he landed distribution with Terrafilms on a completely self-financed film.
Dead Duck Film Club's next screening: The Raid, 30th March at the Savoy Cinema, Nottingham.
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Sébastien is joined by Emily, co-founder and editorial director of the Nottingham Horror Collective, for a deep dive into The Ugly Stepsister (2024): the Norwegian body horror reimagining of Cinderella that's been causing a stir on the awards circuit, including an Oscar nomination for Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling.
We get into what makes this film such a gut-punch: the grotesque beauty standards Elvira endures, the tapeworm as umbilical cord, the Cinderella twist you may or may not see coming, the surprisingly complex mother, and why women behind the camera are doing something fundamentally different with body horror right now.
Mark from Rambling Cinema also drops in — and we talk recent watches, the Oscar death race, and why horror is always political.
Films mentioned in this episode:
The Ugly Stepsister (2024)Red Rooms (2023)We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021)Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Season 4 (TV)Omen / Augure (2023)All That's Left of You (2024)Mr. Nobody Against Putin (2024)The Substance (2024)Begonia / Bugonia (2025)Relic (2020)Saccharine (upcoming)Death Becomes Her (1992)Filth (2013)Revenge (2017)The Neon Demon (2016)Black Swan (2010)Raw (2016)Suspiria (2018)The Devil's Bath (2024)Malignant (2021)The First Omen (2024)Nosferatu (2024)The Witch (2015)The Lighthouse (2019)The Northman (2022)A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)My Father's Shadow (2024)The Raid (2011)Find the Nottingham Horror Collective on Instagram: @nottinghamhorrorcollective Find Rambling Cinema's upcoming screenings at their socials.
Dead Duck Film Club's next screening: The Raid – 30th April
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This week we’re talking Oscars.
From the chaos of the Oscar Death Race to how the Academy has changed over the last decade, we dig into what the awards actually mean now, how international cinema is reshaping the ceremony, and the films that hit us the hardest this year.
Expect opinions, trivia, and probably a few controversial takes.
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Two films. Same idea. Very different outcomes.
We compare Save the Green Planet and Bugonia: tone, themes, performances, and why they hit so differently depending on when you watch them.
Spoilers. Disagreements. Good chaos.
00:00 Intro
05:20 Why These Two Films Are Even Comparable
16:30 Class, Belief and Conspiracy Culture
28:30 Violence, Shock and Tone Differences
37:20 The Cop Scene Comparison (Tone vs Chaos)
57:30 Reception, Critics vs Audience
01:06:00 Cinematography, Style and What Aged Well
01:16:30 Physical Media, Rewatch Value and Final Thoughts
01:18:20 Outro -
Séb and Mark dive into Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, unpacking its dark humour, themes of masculinity, wealth, desperation, and societal pressure. They explore the film’s performances, visual style, emotional shifts, and moral chaos, offering an honest, spoiler-filled take on one of the year’s most provocative releases.
00:00 Intro
06:00 First thoughts on No Other Choice
12:00 Themes: masculinity, wealth, pressure
18:00 Dark humour & tone
24:00 Identity, work & moral choices
33:00 Mansu’s descent
52:00 Relationships & emotional fallout
01:09:00 Climax & consequences
01:22:00 What the film is really about
01:29:00 Performances & final thoughts -
We dive into Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, a seductive, twist-filled thriller about power, deception, and desire.
We unpack its shocking turns, shifting perspectives, and why it feels like one of the boldest, funniest, and most exhilarating films of the 21st century. Expect spoilers, strong opinions, and a lot of love for a modern masterpiece.
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Oscar-winning makeup artist Adrien Morot reveals how the shocking, hyper-real wounds of Martyrs were created, from foam-latex prosthetics to the infamous flayed-body finale.
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