festival reports

Oberhausen. This year the festival kicked of its 55th edition with an international competition program consisting of 51 films from 31 country (selected from 4.433 entries from 91 countries). The Chinese Jia Zhang-ke (with Cry Me a River) and the Thai Apichatpong Weerasethakul (with A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, photo) were the most prominent authors in this competition that had somewhat a mixed quality. The films differed from features, documentaries to animation and experimental, and were on different formats, from 35mm to DV. Reports

San Francisco. The San Francisco International Film Festival — as old as Vertigo (1958) — brought a sense of hometown romance to the downward spiral by opening with Peter Bratt's bittersweet La Mission: "an ardent love letter to the vibrancy of San Francisco's Mission District," per the SFIFF's executive director Graham Leggat, "and an urgent corrective to the violence that plays out in its streets." Reports

Lisbon. 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. An 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. Reports

Wiesbaden. For seven days the German city of Wiesbaden, the cozy capital of the Federal State of Hessen, becomes the capital of east European cinema, by presenting over 110 feature films, documentaries and short films from Germany's eastern neighbors. The goEast Film Festival was launched in 2001 and could very quickly establish its profile. Together with the Cottbus Festival of East European Cinema it has become the most important showcase for films from the east in western Europe. Reports

Semih Kaplanoglu (middle), receiving the FIPRESCI Prize.

Istanbul. The national competition of 14 films is the festival's most interesting part, for foreigners as well as for the local public. For fest directors, it's a gold mine, a place for discoveries. The Istanbul Festival, part of a foundation for culture and the arts, has consolidated and strengthened this role over the last years. It offered as well new Turkish documentaries. For the international program, fest head Azize Tan managed to invite Bill Plympton, Peter Greenaway and Christian Mungiu to hold master classes. John Malkovich and François Ozon, among others, presented new films. Jerzy Skolimowski was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Reports

Lecce. In its 10th edition, the Lecce Film Festival of European Cinema continued to prove its character as a platform for both new Italian and young European cinema. Italian actress Margherita Buy was invited to a homage of some of her works. Turkish-born director Ferzan Ozpetek, who lives and works in Italy, was invited to a complete retrospective. Also, actor Raoul Bova and the late director Carmelo Bene were honored with homages. Furthermore, some of the latest Italian movies were shown. Reports

Buenos Aires. Sergio Wolf's second edition as director impressed in both breadth and depth; the cinemas, as usual in movie-hungry Buenos Aires, were regularly packed, whether for new films or retrospectives on modern masters Jean Eustache and Jean-Marie Straub (to name two); dialogues were presented with filmmakers as wide ranging as James Benning and José Mojica Marins; the environment was, well, festive. For Argentinean cinema, it was a so-so year — whose blossoming at the turn of the millennium became one of the initial reasons for the growth of the festival and its attractiveness as a destination for international programmers and critics alike, and is now reflected in the business activities of the Buenos Aires Lab (BAL) where works in progress are presented alongside coproduction meetings. (The photo shows fest-head Sergio Wolf at a press conference.) Reports

Hong Kong. Cinephiles have been able to choose from a wide range of world films, documentaries, shorts, retrospectives, and tribute programs to filmmakers including Ichikawa Jun, Hans Richter, Michelangelo Antonioni, Yu Hyun-mok, Evan Yang, and one extraordinary installation co-curated with the Swedish Institute and labelled "The Bergman Tree". The festival also supported four competitions: the Asian Digital Competition; the Humanitarian Award for Documentaries; the 4th Fresh Wave Short Film Competition; and our own FIPRESCI Award for Best Debut Feature Film. Reports

Toulouse. The "Rencontres Cinémas d'Amérique Latine", founded 20 years ago by a small group of lovers of Latin American cinema around the "Cinémathèque de Toulouse", is one of the most important festivals for South American movies outside the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries. Toulouse, the pleasant and cozy university town in the south-west of France, with its special open and relaxed atmosphere, is an important meeting point for filmmakers, actors, critics, producers and distributors, and for a mainly young audience with an obvious enthusiasm for cinema. Reports

Guadalajara. The "International Festival of Cinema in Guadalajara" continues the traditional showcase of the Mexican annual production, and adds an overview on and competition of Iberoamerican Cinema. The Iberoamerican designation refers to Portugal, Spain, and the countries of Latin America. A most interesting sidebar, "Alternate Currents", offered a showcase of unusual features from around the world. Other special presentations included panoramas of Cuban cinema (celebrating the Cuban Film Institute's 50th anniversary) and of recent Colombian cinema. Reports

Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival. Views of the world in the 21st century were presented in several sections as well as tributes to directors such as Peter Wintonick and Stefan Schwietert. Countries in focus were Mexico and Austria. A special dealed with hybrid docs. Read our coverage

Fribourg. The festival, for the second time headed by French critic Edouard Weintrop, offered a diversified overview on new tendancies in African, Asian and Latin American cinemas. Peruvian director Francisco Lombardi was honored with a retrospective. More

Miami. The festival, hosted and organized by the Miami Dade College, has over the last years a varied history and was this year for the first time headed by Italian Tiziana Finzi (who had earlier worked with the festivals of Venice and Locarno, among others). In just a few months she made several changes and profiled a lineup of exciting, diverse and strong films scattered in the diverse categories. More

Sofia. For the 13th time, the Sofia International Film Festival presented more than 200 films through its international, regional and national programs, featuring captivating stories, told from the distinct perspectives of either insiders or outsiders. Most films reflected the close relations of film directors to their native culture and society. Romanian first fiction The Happiest Girl in the World (photo) by Radu Jude won the Critics' Prize. More

Mexico City. Living in the shadow of the enormous neighborhood of the United States, Mexico once again had the brilliant idea to organize the sixth edition of the Festival of Independent Cinema. The Mexico International Contemporary Film Festival (FICCO) has however celebrated an unusual 6th edition. The old management, lead by founder Paula Astorga and her team, quit few months ago. Deep disagreements with exhibitor Cinemex, also owner of the festival, caused the resignation. The new team, headed by Raquel Cajiga, director, and Yibran Asuad, programmer, made it possible that the festival continued. Read more

Berlin.. Undoubtedly one of the largest film events worldwide, the Berlinale has been growing systematically over the years under the careful tutelage of its director, Dieter Kosslick. Ever the visionary, Kosslick managed to make the Berlinale even bigger this year by adding Friedrichstadt-Palast to the festival venues (a famous, even legendary, Berlin revue theater). Kosslick furthermore enriched the four classical sections of Competition, Panorama, Forum and Retrospective with additional sections, events, panels, presentations of German films, homages and a gigantic (but useful) Talent Campus. The international jury (chaired by British actress Tilda Swinton) selected The Milk of Sorrow (photo) by young Peruvian Claudia Llosa as winner — a film awarded also the Critics' Prize by our Jury. Read about the festival
   During the festival (which was running February 5-15, 2009), eight young critics from all over the world attended the "Talent Press" workshop and wrote daily on films, events, people. Talent Press 2009

Göteborg. The premiere showcase for Scandinavian cinema screened 450 short, feature, and documentary films from around the world, including several competition categories for international debut film, Nordic feature, and Swedish short. Supplementing this rich central selection of Northern European cinema were an array of sidebars and special sections devoted to a host of national, cultural, and cinematic topics. A trio of films by Nuri Bilge Ceylan topped a valuable survey of recent Turkish cinema, while the local premiere of Gus Van Sant's Milk opened an "LGBT" section of "love stories that are not the conventional, heterosexual ones". Read more

Rotterdam. This 38th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam is still the best way and place in the world for auteurs, independent & uncompromised films lovers to begin the year. The main competition (The Tiger Awards, for first or second features) is the laboratory to find the next Carlos Reygadas or Hong Sang-Soo (who all made their way from Rotterdam). Besides discoveries (for example, a "Young Turkish Cinema" selection), retrospectives were dedicated to Paolo Benvenuti and Jerzy Skolimowski. The other main event, the co-production market Cinemart, raised of course the talk of the year: funds issues in these times of crisis. So far, current projects are safe. More

FIPRESCI Prize in both Tromso and Palm Springs: "Revanche"

Palm Springs. Palm Springs' entirely warranted claim to fame is its annual effort to show as many of the films submitted for the Foreign Language Oscar as possible. The Academy's short list of 9 contenders — all of which were screened in Palm Springs — was made public midway through the fest. Festival attendees had a crack at nearly all of the 67 films in the running, which means an assiduous festival-goer could take in more reigning examples of global cinema than the voting members of the Academy are required to watch. Read more

Tromso. The Norwegian Film Festival offers a vivid mixture between a "festival of festivals" and a showcase of new Norwegian movies, enriched eventually with some world premieres. It's basically an audience-oriented event, with more than 50.000 sold tickets, with viewers queuing up to get tickets, and with some industry people, festival programmers and journalists attending. Reports

More Festivals:

See our 2008 reports from Stockholm ljubljana Sarajevo Zanzibar

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