The Film Programme

Francine Stock on the hits and misses of the Cannes Film Festival, plus British director Clio Barnard on The Selfish Giant and Stephen Frears on Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight. Plus Olivier Assayas on nostalgia and radical politics in Something In The Air.

Francine Stock on The Great Gatsby premiere and the films to watch out for at the Cannes Film Festival. Jay Bulger on his Ginger Baker music documentary. Neil Brand on spy music.

Actor Riz Ahmed talks to Francine Stock about The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Plus director Jeff Nichols on Mississippi adventure, Mud. The writers/producers of Star Trek Into Darkness. And film maker Sarah Gavron explains how a holiday in Greenland became her latest documentary.

Director Pedro Almodovar tells Francine Stock his raunchy new comedy I'm So Excited is a commentary on Spanish politics. Actor Tom Courtenay looks back at Billy Liar, 50 years on. Adam Leon explains why he wanted to show the grittier, real New York in his new feature Gimme The Loot about young graffiti artists. And with The Reluctant Fundamentalist due for release next week, the young British actor Riz Ahmed tells the story of his big break and how he was discovered by the director Michael Winterbottom.

Francine Stock talks to Steve Coogan about The Look of Love and to Jack Black about Bernie. Both films are based on real people - how can biopics be honest and innovative? And the actor Terence Stamp looks back at this career from Billy Budd to The Collector, Theorem and The Limey as the British Film Institute opens a retrospective on his work next week.

This week the Film Programme debates whether films can really change the world. Francine Stock talks to Jeremy Irons about his documentary Trashed which looks at global waste and discusses the feature film Promised Land, starring Matt Damon and Frances McDormand, which tackles fracking. The director Susanne Bier explains why she wanted to reinvent the rom com and we hear from the actor and director Mathieu Kassovitz about his new film Rebellion.

Director Derek Cianfrance talks to Francine Stock about The Place Beyond the Pines. Documentary maker Dror Moreh on how he got former Israeli secret service chiefs to talk on film.

Francine Stock talks to Harmony Korine about his new and most commercial film to date, Spring Breakers starring James Franco, Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens.

Francine Stock talks to Oscar winning film director Danny Boyle about a lifetime spent making films, including his latest "Trance", a noirish art heist starring James McAvoy and Rosario Dawson, in which a fine art auctioneer (McAvoy) joins forces with a hypnotherapist (Dawson) to recover a lost painting.

Francine Stock talks to Francois Ozon about In The House; re-visits sixties thriller Point Blank with director John Boorman and discusses the unsettling Compliance with Craig Zobel

Francine Stock discusses Ken Loach's archive documentary The Spirit of '45 and the challenges of making a second film after a successful debut with director of Shifty, Eran Creevy. And a review of The Paperboy starring Nicole Kidman

Steven Soderbergh talks about his film Side Effects. And Tim Roth on Broken, a new British film that marks a debut for theatre director Rufus Norris. The 25th anniversary of The Princess Bride and Oscar-winning producer Andrew Ruhemann on his big break - the day Steven Spielberg came to call

Francine Stock talks to Mark Wahlberg about his latest role as an ex-cop in the thriller Broken City which also stars Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Richard Gere discusses charm and corruption which both feature heavily in Arbitrage, a film about high finance, greed and adultery. Neil Bennett from Digital Arts magazine explains why there's a crisis in the visual effects industry despite films like Life of Pi, which rely on such skills, topping the Oscars list.There's discussion of the Italian film Caesar Must Die, with Shakespeare's Julius Caesar played by real-life prisoners. And Alison Abbate, producer of Frankenweenie, on her passion for stop-motion animation.

Matthew Sweet talks to Tom Tykwer, one of the directors of the much-anticipated film Cloud Atlas. The actress Olga Kurylenko discusses her role in the latest offering from director Terrence Malick, To The Wonder. And the composer Neil Brand is at the piano to delve into the scores of children's films from classics like Mary Poppins to more recent films like Happy Feet and Frankenweenie.

The director Judd Apatow talks to Francine Stock about his new comedy This Is 40. Known for films such as Bridesmaids, Knocked Up and Anchorman, he describes the joys - and challenges - of directing his wife and children in his latest film. Oscar-nominee and supervising sound editor on Bond-movie Skyfall, Karen Baker Landers lays bare some of the techniques of her profession, including intriguing insights into how the sound can affect a film's rating. The documentary maker Alex Gibney explores child abuse in the Catholic Church in his new work Mea Maxima Culpa. And the Australian director Cate Shortland discusses Lore, her film inspired by the book The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert and why she decided to make the film in German, despite not speaking the language fluently herself.