Alejandro G. Iñárritu Officially Joins Season 12 of Mubi's Most Slept-On Series

Mubi isn’t just a film distributor and streaming service; it also produces Mubi Podcast, an essential behind-the-scenes look into the world of movie making. Collider is proud to exclusively announce that Mubi Podcast will return for season 12 this month, and this time they’re covering a spate of films that were made under the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

Mubi Podcast began in 2021 with the aim of revealing how great cinema is made, and it’s delivered on that promise for eleven seasons and counting. It’s hosted by writer and radio broadcaster Rico Gagliano, and has previously explored topics like international cinema, horror movies, famous flops, and the cinema of the late David Lynch.

Season 12 of Mubi Podcast is titled Under Pressure: it will look at a series of films that were made under trying circumstances despite intense political opposition and under trying circumstances. Guests on this season include Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the Oscar-winning director who recently graced cinemas with Digger; Fatih Akin, the Turkish writer-director who won the Golden Bear for the drama Head-On; and Ali Abbasi, the director of the controversial Iranian crime thriller Holy Spider and the even-more controversial The Apprentice, which examined the relationship between a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) and his lawyer, Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Season 12, which will includes five all-new episodes, will premiere on all major podcasting services on November 12.

• The first film not in the English language to win Best Picture, in the Academy’s
  92-year history to that point.
• It took four Oscars in one night: Picture, Director, Original Screenplay and International
  Feature.
• It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2019 by a unanimous jury vote, the first Korean film
  to do so.
• The Park family’s modernist house was not a location. It was built from scratch on an
  outdoor lot.

• Seven Oscars, including three acting wins for Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee
  Curtis.
• Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win Best Actress.
• The visual effects were handled by a team of fewer than ten people, most of them
  self-taught.
• Ke Huy Quan had all but left acting for two decades before this role brought him back.

• Seven Oscars, including Nolan’s first wins for directing and for Best Picture.
• Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. both took their first Academy Awards for it.
• Kodak engineered a black-and-white 65mm stock that did not previously exist so Nolan could
  shoot those sequences on IMAX.
• A three-hour, R-rated drama about theoretical physics that passed 950 million dollars
  worldwide.

• Four Oscars, among them Best Picture and Best Director for Iñárritu.
• Emmanuel Lubezki’s win here was the middle of three consecutive cinematography Oscars,
  after Gravity and before The Revenant.
• Antonio Sánchez’s improvised drum score was ruled ineligible for the score category,
  which caused a minor uproar.
• The long-take illusion was built from a handful of extended shots joined by hidden cuts.

• Four Oscars: Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem.
• Adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel, with much of his dialogue carried over
  intact.
• Carter Burwell’s score runs about sixteen minutes and is nearly inaudible by design.
• Roger Deakins was nominated twice that year, for this and The Assassination of Jesse James,
  and won for neither.

What Movies Will Mubi Podcast Discuss This Season?

Episode 1 of the season will tell the tale of Yılmaz Güney, a Turkish tough-guy actor turned left-wing film-maker; he made his masterpiece, Yol, despite being sentenced to a 30-year prison term on dubious charges. Iñárritu and Akin will join Gagliano for the episode. Episodes 2 and 3 will cover the stranger-than-fiction story of Pulgasari, a giant-monster movie made in North Korea by director Shin Sang-ok and actor Choi Eun-hee, a married couple who’d been kidnapped to the hermit kingdom by Kim Jong-il. Paul Fischer, who wrote the non-fiction book A Kim Jong-il Production, will guest on the two-parter. Episode 4 deals with Julia Loktev, a film-maker who covers independent journalism in Russia, which is being crushed under the thumb of Vladimir Putin. Loktev will discuss her two-part documentary My Undesirable Friends. The season will then wrap up with episode 5, in which Abbasi will detail the political pressures he’s faced making movies in both Iran and the United States.

Season 12 of Mubi Podcast will premiere on November 12. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.

Pulgasari