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
Digger: Can Tom Cruise Ever Stop Being Tom Cruise?
For forty years, Tom Cruise has sold us one thing: a man who will not stop running. In Digger (2026), Alejandro G. Iñárritu casts him as an oil tycoon in prosthetics, only for the trailer to remind us of every Tom Cruise who came before. What happens when the ultimate movie star tries to disappear into a role?
Laura Gommans and producer Elliot Bloom take Digger as a starting point to ask whether a movie star can ever truly play against type, or whether the persona is always visible beneath the performance. From Henry Fonda turning killer in Once Upon a Time in the West to Adam Sandler unravelling in Punch-Drunk Love, they explore why some of the most revealing performances happen when actors push against the image we already have of them. And what happens when Jesse Plemons walks into Digger and threatens to steal the show?
A follow-up to our earlier episode asking whether Tom Cruise could save cinema. The first half is spoiler-free. The alarm sounds at 18:01.
Tell us how you'd rate it. We can't decide.
Get tickets to Digger (https://www.lab111.nl/movie/digger/) @ LAB111
Get tickets to Shall We Dance? (Ballroom Dancing Workshop) (https://www.lab111.nl/shall-we-dance-ballroom-dancing-workshop/)@ LAB111
Get tickets to Film and Food: Do The Right Thing (https://www.lab111.nl/film-food-do-the-right-thing-incl-pizza-slices/) @ LAB111
A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.
2 Oct 2026
Why Is Dutch Cinema Struggling to Find Its Audience?
From Paul Verhoeven to Hoyte van Hoytema to Halina Reijn, Dutch filmmakers have made a mark far beyond the Netherlands. But why doesn’t Dutch cinema travel as far as the talent it produces?
For this Nederlands Film Festival special, Celebrating Cinema host Elliot Bloom speaks with actor Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing, director Mees Peijnenburg and producer Leontine Petit, who co-produced the Oscar-nominated Brazilian film The Secret Agent.
Together, they discuss what Dutch cinema gains from international collaboration, why homegrown films struggle to find audiences, and the tension between making films for the Dutch market and competing internationally. What would it take to build a Dutch cinema that can connect at home and travel abroad?
29 Sept 2026
Can Cinema Show Us What We Can’t See? — NFF Special w/ Amanda van Hesteren & Emma Lesuis
For this Nederlands Film Festival special, Kiriko Mechanicus meets two rising Dutch filmmakers who use cinema to get closer to people and histories — and to find out what lies beyond what they already know.
Amanda van Hesteren's Dagen met Blue is built around the trust between filmmaker and subject. Kiriko chats to Amanda about her fascination with people in all their colours, how she creates the space for Blue to open up, and what she can learn about someone by spending enough time with them to look beyond the version of themselves they show the world.
In Bagasi – wat we meedragen, Emma Lesuis investigates her family's colonial history in Suriname. By combining documentary and theatre, Emma finds a way into a history that runs through both the colonised and the coloniser in her own family and, in the process, comes to see that history differently.
Sometimes, you have to make the film to understand what you're actually looking at.
Watch Dagen Met Blue (https://www.filmfestival.nl/film/dagen-met-blue) @ NFF
Watch Bagasi (https://www.npodoc.nl/artikelen/bagasi-wat-we-meedragen) on NPO
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
5 ratings
Spotify
4.9 / 5
138 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 64 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
95
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
85
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