The Film Programme

Antonia Quirke and Caitlin Benedict visit the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Lapland, where the sun shines for 24 hours in summer and films are shown every hour of the day. There they speak to Iranian exiles Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Marzieh Meshkini, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles, French auteur Arnaud Desplechin and Mark Jenkin from Cornwall. Along the way, they meet the people who make the festival possible, the volunteers, and find out why all the directors are expected to get into a sauna and go skinny dipping.

With Antonia Quirke Writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce talks about his Scrabble-based drama Sometimes, Always, Never and reveals why the film took 12 years to go from script to screen. Neil Brand continues his series on famous film scores that were last minute replacements with the story of Oliver Stone's Platoon and Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings. Voice coach Penny Dyer reveals what lessons she gave Helen Mirren to talk like the Queen, and helps Antonia rediscover her Manchester accent.

With Antonia Quirke Asif Kapadia, the director of Amy and Senna, discusses his latest documentary, Diego Maradona, and reveals why he's never wanted to touch anyone more than he wanted to touch the footballer's legendary left foot. Sir Christopher Frayling talks us through the soundtrack of Once Upon A Time In The West and how Ennio Morricone was influenced by a symphony of metal ladders. In the latest edition of Pitch Battle, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw pitches a novel called Swordspoint to a panel of movie insiders, Lizzie Francke, Rowan Woods and Clare Binns. They decide whether Ellen Kushner's book is a suitable case for the movie treatment.

Visual effects artist Paul Franklin on 1979's Alien, and its influence on his Oscar winning work on Inception and Interstellar. Francine Stock also hears from Alien's producer Ivor Powell, editor Terry Rawlings, who died in April 2019, and the film's director Ridley Scott.

With Antonia Quirke. Actor turned director Olivia Wilde talks about her debut feature a high school comedy Booksmart, and reveals why she asked her two leads to live together before they started filming. The Film Programme follows husband and wife team Geoff and Sarah Bird as they set up their first film festival, and take over the town of Skipton, showing movies on a barge, in the castle and down the pub. Film buyer Clare Binns and movie critic Tim Robey report from this year's Cannes Film Festival.