IndieLisboa 2009

FIPRESCI Prize: "The Happiest Girl in the World"

IndieLisboa — Lisbon Festival of Independent Film. The sixth Lisbon Festival of Independent Film, better known as IndieLisboa, featured eleven films in the international competition and four in the national one. The section called "Independent Heroes" comprised retrospectives of two great European auteurs, Werner Herzog and Jacques Nolot. Nolot attended the festival, but Herzog could not come because of obligations regarding two new films in production, so his brother and producer Lucki Stipetic replaced him.
    The festival also organized different side activities, such as a panel on the crisis and future of film criticism, moderated by the former editor of Slovenia's "Ekran" magazine, Nika Bohinc.
    Another important part of the festival is "Lisbon Talks", aimed at bringing the way the filmmaking world operates closer to students of cinema and all professionals working in the business. It incorporates debates, a seminar and master classes, involving illustrious Portuguese and foreign guests from different areas. IndieLisboa also presents movies that were shown in previous editions of the festival. These take place in several Portuguese cities as a part of the festival's policy of decentralization.
    IndieLisboa is a small festival which manages to present important and fresh films of world cinema in competition and emerging cinema programs. The main jury this year was headed by the director of the Venice Film Festival Marco Muller and the competition included April Showers by Portuguese Ivo M. Ferreira, Argentinean Mariano de Rosa's Green Waters, Lance Hammer's Ballast, Radu Jude's FIPRESCI Prize winner The Happiest Girl in the World, Korean Yang Ik-Yune's Breathless, Irish Christine Molloy and Jow Lawlor's Helen, Sean Baker's Prince of Broadway, Russian Boris Khlebnikov's Help Gone Mad, Argentinean Celia Murga's A Week Alone, Winter Silence by Sonja Wyss from Holland, and Chinese Zhao Ye's Jalanur. (Vladan Petkovic)

Festival Internacional de Cinema Independente — IndieLisboa, Lisbon, Portugal, April 23 — March 3, 2009, www.indielisboa.com
FIPRESCI Prize: The Happiest Girl in the World (Cea mai fericita fata din lume) by Radu Jude (Romania, Netherlands, 2009). Details

Reports

Independents Days. Vladan Petkovic takes an overview of IndieLisboa, and is impressed by the whole program, mainly by the very strong competition. "All in all, IndieLisboa is a very interesting little festival with good films. It definitely fulfils its primary function as a showcase of important new film-making for the Portuguese audiences who duly filled most of the screenings."
Fascination for Charismatic Eccentrics — The Indefatigable, Idealistic and Visionary German. Demetrios Matheou writes about the Werner Herzog retrospective: "Herzog is one of the most distinctive auteurs in cinema history, making only the films he wants to make, in the way he wants to make them... his films share an unrivalled consistency of ambition, rooted in an interest in different cultures and different ways of perceiving the world."
For The Happiest Girl in the World, see also Tonci Valentic's review from Sofia 2009

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