Celebrating Cinema

LAB111

A podcast for the love of cinema.

Amsterdam's LAB111 film podcast on the cinema that matters — debates, rankings, and director deep dives, every Thursday. From cult classics to today's most-talked-about releases, Laura Gommans (film journalist), Hugo Emmerzael (film critic), Kiriko Mechanicus (filmmaker) and Tom Ooms (film programmer) take turns asking what films tell us about ourselves, our culture, and the times we live in.
Show notes and the CC newsletter at celebratingcinema.com.

You can get in touch at celebratingcinema@lab111.nl

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June 18 · 29 min
Did Movies Invent Alien Encounters?
Nobody has ever filmed a real alien, so why do they all look the same? The grey skin, the black almond eyes, sixty years running. This week Laura Gommans is joined by historian Alexander Bartels, who curated LAB111's We Are Not Alone season, for a conversation about the gap between the aliens cinema gives us and the things people actually report seeing. On screen: greys, flying saucers, humanoid visitors. From the real records that Bartels studies: declassified military footage, radar data, government files from around the world there are mostly orbs and lights, unspectacular and almost impossible to film. So where did the grey come from? They follow the loop back to one telling case: The Bellero Shield, an episode of The Outer Limits that aired in February 1964, twelve days before Barney Hill, under hypnosis, drew the wrap-around-eyed alien that matched it almost exactly. Screen and sighting have been copying each other ever since, right up to a 2024 Pentagon report that blames film and television for what people believe they've seen. Has cinema ever shown us something genuinely other, or only ever redrawn ourselves? Get tickets to ⁠Disclosure Day⁠ @ LAB111 Get tickets to ⁠We Are Not Alone⁠ @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
June 11 · 44 min
Is Disclosure Day Spielberg's Most Hopeful Film Or His Most Naive?
Steven Spielberg spent fifty years teaching us to look up. When the Pentagon released its real alien files, nobody blinked. His new film Disclosure Day marks the day the truth finally lands — this time his aliens look back at us, but the question is whether anyone still believes him. Fresh from the Tuschinski premiere, Laura Gommans and producer Elliot Bloom get into late Spielberg — shortcuts, or message over quality — empathy as the ruling emotion of the universe, and whether cinema's great sentimentalist can still earn the tears. One of them cried twice. The other counted seventy FBI agents with no peripheral vision. With a voice note from BBC film critic Ali Plumb on the night Spielberg crashed his pub quiz, and a listener's hot take on thirty wet years of Spielberg's cinematographer Janusz Kamiński. Spoilers from 18:06 — come back when you've seen it. Get tickets to Disclosure Day @ LAB111 Get tickets to We Are Not Alone @ LAB111 A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
June 4 · 58 min
Fast & Furious: How the Franchise Remade Hollywood (w/ Dan Hassler-Forest)
The Fast and the Furious (Rob Cohen, 2001) was a small film about Los Angeles street racers, immigrant car culture, and a cop who didn't want to be one. Twenty-five years on it's a seven-billion-dollar franchise where cars get launched into space and "family" is a marketing strategy. From Echo Park to outer space — what does that arc tell us about Hollywood? This is the first part of Cine of the Times, a new monthly Celebrating Cinema strand. Each month, critic Hugo Emmerzael (Filmkrant, Locarno) and media studies scholar Dan Hassler-Forest (Utrecht University) take one film from the century so far, ranging from arthouse to spectacular pulp. This month: the serialised blockbuster, the economics of the sequel, and how a street-racing B-movie became the template for the modern studio franchise. Listen first. Then join us at LAB111 on Wednesday 17 June — curated clips, an extended introduction, and a post-screening discussion. Get your tickets here. A film podcast from LAB111 — Amsterdam's arthouse cinema for independent and cult films. Produced by Elliot Bloom.
May 28 · 33 min
The Backrooms, Explained: Kane Parsons & the A24 Feature
Kane Parsons made the Backrooms on YouTube when he was only sixteen. Over 200 million views later, A24 has handed him his feature debut, making him the studio's youngest director ever at 20. But the yellow walls still don't end. This week Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom go into the maze and come back with an answer that has very little to do with what's actually inside. The Backrooms, they argue, is about us, stuck in our own feedback loop, drifting through vacant spaces. Online, half the internet thinks Kane Parsons couldn't have directed such a hit so young. Mark Duplass, who was on set the whole time, says they're wrong. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve carry the screen, with James Wan and Osgood Perkins producing. Laura and Elliot ask: what does it take to direct a feature like this at 20 with a crew this experienced? And has A24 found its next pipeline for talent — skipping film school for YouTube horror directors? Get tickets to Backrooms @ LAB111 Get tickets to ⁠⁠Cine of The Times: The Fast And The Furious⁠⁠ @ LAB111 Get tickets to Straight To Video: Nightmare At Noon @ LAB111 A film podcast from LAB111 — Amsterdam's arthouse cinema for independent and cult films. Produced by Elliot Bloom.
May 26 · 44 min
Cannes 2026 Dispatch With Peter Bradshaw
The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw has been sending dispatches from Cannes since 1999. If you ask him what's changed in 27 years, he claims: nothing. He means it as a compliment. Hugo Emmerzael sits down with the legendary film critic on the Croisette mapping out Peter's journey through film, from his first memory of cinema through the strange, accidental route into one of the most-read critic chairs in the English-speaking press. They get into why only Cannes, among the major film festivals, still places film criticism at the heart of it all. Plus five films that caught Peter's attention this year: Andrey Zvyagintsev's Minotaur, Paweł Pawlikowski's Fatherland, Rodrigo Sorogoyen's Beloved, Marine Atlan's La Gradiva, and Clio Barnard's I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, and why we should value the politics inside the films rather than the statements and press conferences around them. Get tickets to ⁠Cine of The Times: The Fast And The Furious⁠ @ LAB111 Get tickets to ⁠Moving incl. Ramen⁠ @ LAB111 Get tickets to ⁠Film Lecture: Everything Is Cinema - The Filmic Alchemy Of Jean-Luc Godard⁠ @ LAB111 A film podcast from LAB111 — Amsterdam's arthouse cinema for independent and cult films. Produced by Elliot Bloom.
May 21 · 53 min
Autobiographical Cinema: Why We Love to Film Ourselves
Long before phones turned every life into footage, a small line of filmmakers was already pointing the camera at themselves — not to perform, but to work out what a life was. This week, producer Elliot Bloom sits down with co-host Kiriko Mechanicus to talk about her new short documentary How To Catch A Butterfly — a first-person essay film that traces how ethnic fetishisation has shaped her relationships and sexual experiences as a Dutch-Japanese woman. The film had its world premiere at SXSW Documentary Short Competition 2026 and won the EMEL Short Film Grand Prize at Indie Lisboa. Together they ask why we keep personal archives at all and what those archives teach us back, especially now, living through the most self-documented stretch of human history — through three landmarks of autobiographical documentary: Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation (2003), Bing Liu's Minding The Gap (2018), and Tom Fassaert's A Family Affair (2015). Plus: a hot take from one of our listeners on Michael , Antoine Fuqua's long-delayed Michael Jackson biopic, now in cinemas. Related episodes: Documentary Ethics with Miriam Guttmann · 2000 Metres To Andriivka And Why We Need Documentary Films.
May 14 · 38 min
Cinema Obsession: Why Films Grip Us (Vertigo, Peeping Tom)
Cinema's dirtiest little secret is that it's designed to make you want something you can never have. In this episode of Celebrating Cinema, host Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms — LAB111's Head of Cinema — talk about what cinema's fixations have done to them. Laura learned to write in Elvish because of The Lord of the Rings. Tom is still working out how much of his idea of relationships comes from Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). We have all spent more time thinking about actors and characters we will never meet than is probably reasonable. Parasocial attachment used to be the strange edge of fandom. Now it's the default condition of watching. The conversation moves through 60 years of films about obsession — Vertigo, Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960), and what they made possible: Misery, Perfect Blue, La Pianiste, Whiplash, Babygirl — but the question underneath is the one cinema doesn't like to answer. What does this kind of looking do to the people being looked at? The actor engineered into someone else's ideal. The face that turns into a brand. And whether cinema knows what it's done to us, or is still pretending it doesn't. A film podcast from LAB111 — Amsterdam's arthouse cinema for independent and cult films. Programmed alongside the Can't Get You Out Of My Head season. Produced by Elliot Bloom. Tickets at lab111.nl/obsession.
May 7 · 36 min
Amadeus: Is It Really About Mediocrity?
Amadeus (1984, Miloš Forman) is not really about Mozart. It's a film about the rest of us — the ones who can recognise genius but will never possess it. Salieri is the true protagonist of this musical biopic. His tragedy isn't jealousy, it's clarity. Now back in cinemas in a new 4K restoration, Laura Gommans and Tom Ooms get into mediocrity, and what it means to be desperate to be a genius and know, quietly, that you won't be. Whether musical genius is even something we value anymore. And if TikTok — full of AI Slop, or a thousand strangers going viral for no particular reason — is the logical conclusion of a culture that stopped caring. For everyone currently in their Salieri era. Get tickets to Amadeus @ LAB111 Get tickets to Film Lecture: My Film Is Vietnam @ LAB111 Get tickets to Can't Get You Out of My Head: Films of Obsession @ LAB111 Get tickets to Fight The Power: How To Catch A Butterfly @ LAB111
April 30 · 38 min
The Devil Wears Prada 2: Is Miranda Priestly A Feminist Icon Or A Toxic Boss?
Miranda once told Andy she was the greatest disappointment of her career. Twenty years on, the question isn't whether she was right — it's what Andy did with it. Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom chat about The Devil Wears Prada and the new sequel and what they have to say about ambition, high fashion, and the specific cruelty of wanting things that cost more than you can reasonably pay. We discuss the consequences for Miranda who is now no longer untouchable — threatened by corporate money that sees a fashion magazine and thinks: overhead. Her methods belong to another era. So does her certainty. Both films ask what we owe the people who pushed us, even when the pushing was cruel. Whether Miranda is a feminist icon or a toxic boss may matter less than what she made possible. Plus a hot take from one of our listeners on whether screenwriters get enough credit for the worlds they create. Get tickets to The Devil Wears Prada 2 @ LAB111 Get tickets to Girls in Film Presents: Behind The Scenes of Motherhood @ LAB111 The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, USA, 2006). The Devil Wears Prada 2 (USA, 2025).
April 23 · 35 min
Truly Naked: Can a Film Be More Intimate Than Porn?
Can a film be more intimate than pornography? Can a film be more intimate than pornography? In Truly Naked (2026), BAFTA-nominated writer-director Muriel D'Ansembourg tells the story of Alec — a teenager raised by two parents in the adult industry, who's seen everything about sex except real intimacy. A school project on porn addiction, and a feminist classmate, force him to confront how his generation actually encounters sex. Laura Gommans sits down with Muriel to ask what cinema still knows about intimacy that the erotic industry has given up on: close-ups, the gaze, the longing for touch. And whether a film that stages intimacy so precisely is any less manipulative than pornography. Follow LAB111 on Letterboxd Listen back to Where Has All The Sex In Cinema Gone.
April 16 · 49 min
Musical Biopics: Can You Still Make a Good One? (Re-Release)
A note from us: we spent the past two weeks going through your survey responses — thank you to everyone who filled it in. Winners will be contacted this week. We're working on what comes next, but we didn't want to leave you hanging. Last year it was A Complete Unknown, Better Man, Maria, this year it's now Michael Jackson. The musical biopic is back again, with all its cliches. We recorded this conversation when A Complete Unknown hit cinemas. Hosts Laura Gommans and Hugo Emmerzael ask what it takes to make a great musical biopic — a genre too often content with greatest-hits storytelling: the origin-story childhood, the long climb, the fall, the redemption arc that arrives whether the life earned one or not. Cinema can do stranger, more honest things with a life. Why doesn't it? We revisit the films that actually break the formula, ask why audiences keep returning to the glossy reenactment, and consider what the genre would look like if it stopped playing it safe. With MJ arriving this month, it felt like the right moment to bring this one back.
April 2 · 37 min
A-List Actors Gone Weird (Borgli's The Drama)
What is the worst thing you've ever done? This week, hosts Laura Gommans and Elliot Bloom watched Kristoffer Borgli's The Drama — and neither of them could stop thinking about it. No spoilers, just their honest reaction to Zendaya and Robert Pattinson's wedding spiralling wonderfully out of control, and what it says about how quickly we judge other people's secrets while sitting on a few of our own. From there: why do the biggest stars on the planet — the ones who are Twilight, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games — keep choosing the strangest roles the moment nobody's watching? Robert Pattinson in sewers. Daniel Radcliffe with a gun for a hand. Kristen Stewart dismantling her own image frame by frame. Is it rebellion, artistic hunger, or is weird the only honest thing left after you've played a hero for a decade? And we're launching something new — Hot Takes, our listener segment where you get to say the thing nobody else will. This week: K-Pop deserves a place in the Criterion Collection. You might be surprised where we land. Get tickets to The Drama @ LAB111 Send your hot takes to celebratingcinema@lab111.nl Follow LAB111 on Letterboxd
March 31 · 31 min
Mees Peijnenburg On A Family, Dutch Cinema, And The Emotional Architecture of Divorce
Divorce is rarely one story. It's four, or five — each told from a different room in the same house. In his new film A Family, Mees Peijnenburg's puts the camera with the children, and what he finds there is something most films about broken homes don't often reach: not blame, not sides, but the bewildered love of people too young to know they're supposed to pick one. Producer Elliot Bloom sits down with Mees to talk about the film, Dutch cinema, and the emotional instinct at the heart of all his work — this search for the places where people feel safe, or desperately want to. We also get into his friendship with Lukas Dhont, director of Close, and why both filmmakers keep returning to young characters who are overwhelmed by life. A Family came from somewhere real for Mees, and yet it reaches beyond the personal — holding every perspective in a family coming apart, and asking what love looks like when the structure it lived inside is gone. Get tickets to A Family @ LAB111 Follow LAB111 on Letterboxd

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