FIPRESCI-Awarded Films in Vladivostok

The 13th Pacific Meridian International Film Festival in Vladivostok (September 12-18, 2015), the most eastern film festival in Russia, which  hosts for the second year a FIPRESCI jury, is initiating a number of events dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI).

The »Critics Choice Program« offers three films of the current festival season which have been given FIPRESCI awards at various international film festivals this year. The films raise topical issues and are noted for their unconventional story lines and innovative artistic language, which makes them correspond to high quality standards followed by the international critics’ community in judging modern cinema.

The Danish film “In Your Arms” by Samanou Acheche Sahlstrom received the FIPRESCI award for his first feature film at the 38th Göteborg International Film Festival. Sahlstrom’s extremely tough and at the same time tender drama about Maria, a young and caring nurse who wants to break free and Niels, an incurable patient who wants to travel to Switzerland to commit assisted suicide, also bagged the Dragon award for Best Nordic Film in Göteborg.

“The Project of the Century” (La obra del siglo), Carlos Quintela’s second film, a Cuba-Argentina-Switzerland-Germany coproduction,  received the FIPRESCI award at the Cinélatino Rencontres de Toulouse. Three generations of men struggle to co-exist under the same roof, in a city once promised to become the hub of the Soviet nuclear project in the Caribbean. Now, the scant remains of this world weigh down on these three solitary men, The film had its premiere in Rotterdam where it won HIVOS Tiger Award.

Isabelle Tollenaeres first feature length film “Battles”, a Belgium- Netherlands coproduction, was awarded with the FIPRESCI prize at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. “Battles” reveals a past that has not come to an end, by scrutinizing the traces which remain in the landscape and the memory and leads us through places in Europe where conflicts have occurred in the recent past.

The festival also organized a round-table discussion about “The Voice of Critic amid the Clatter of Opinions”, where Russian film critics and international FIPRESCI members will explore the nature of interaction between professional critics and the heterogeneous community of cinephiles, as well as the ways the authors strategies inside the critical discourse are changing under the influence of the modern media.

Barbara Lorey