PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Kenneth Lonergan, director of Manchester by the Sea, at the 11th Rome Film Fest.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture

FRED’s Chiara Nicoletti meets Kenneth Lonergan, director of Manchester by the Sea, starring Casey Affleck, Kyle Chandler and Michelle Williams. As in his previous films, Lonergan tries to analyze how loss can or can’t be processed and how people deal with it and live through it. Casey Affleck delivers his most extraordinary performance and Lonergan describes in details one of the most cathartic and intense scenes of the film.

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA. In Manchester by the Sea, the latest film from award-winning writer and director Kenneth Lonergan, the life of a solitary Boston janitor is transformed when he returns to his hometown to take care of his teenage nephew. The story of the Chandlers, a working-class family living in a Massachusetts fishing village for generations, Manchester by the Sea is a deeply poignant, unexpectedly funny exploration of the power of familial love, community, sacrifice and hope. After the death of his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler), Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is shocked to learn that Joe has made him sole guardian of his nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges). Taking leave of his job, Lee reluctantly returns to Manchester-by-the-Sea to care for Patrick, a spirited 16-year-old, and is forced to deal with a past that separated him from his wife Randi (Michelle Williams) and the community where he was born and raised. Bonded by the man who held their family together, Lee and Patrick struggle to adjust to a world without him.