This week we’re joined once again by Irini M., who brings us news from her home country’s Thessaloniki Film Festival in a notably more concise fashion than September’s Venice round-up. She also joins in our discussion of some interesting recent events, which includes some rare exciting news involving David O. Russell, and the bizarre spectrum of films vying for this year’s Animated Feature Oscar. We discuss two Foreign Language Oscar contenders, as Paolo Virzi’s “Human Capital” enlivens the middle-class misery of bourgeois Italy and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Leviathan” documents the coastal conflicts of rural Russia, before giving ambition a dressing down, as Christopher Nolan’s epic “Interstellar” comes to town. We reveal whether the cinematic influences used in the film are a blessing or curse, and whether Nolan’s scope and logic holds up under scrutiny. Elsewhere, we recount a horror show from Venice which saw Pete become a gay advocate, a mistaken text briefly convinced Cal that his niece was a child genius, while Keira Knightley’s recent quest to boost female self-image has us rather baffled.

• Darren Aronofsky to head the jury at next year’s Berlin Film Festival
• David O. Russell’s long-delayed “Nailed” re-titled as “Love in Politics” and scheduled for release in the UK
• Animated Feature Oscar qualifying list is announced
• European Film Award nominations are announced

[3:05 – 20:55]

• Leviathan
• Human Capital

[43:25 – 1:01:30]