email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

TRIESTE 2021

Central Eastern European cinema to be showcased online by Trieste

by 

- The 32nd Trieste Film Festival will unspool online, between 21-30 January, offering up over 50 titles from 38 countries, and opening with Emir Kusturica's 1995 Palme d’Or winner Underground

Central Eastern European cinema to be showcased online by Trieste
Andromeda Galaxy by More Raça

The best of Central Eastern European cinema is making its return in digital form, on account of the ongoing health crisis, by way of the 32nd Trieste Film Festival which will run 21 – 30 January. The 50+ titles selected for the event directed by Fabrizio Grosoli and Nicoletta Romeo will be available to view on the MyMovies platform. This particular edition of the festival was supposed to revolve around the thirty-year anniversary of the Balkan Wars (1991/2021), “a project we’d been working on for years”, the artistic directors explain. But the pandemic has forced the festival to postpone this focus, “because many of the films we would have wanted to screen only exist in 35mm copies, which are impossible to screen in online festivals. Consequently, the tribute has been postponed (only to the spring, we hope), but we nonetheless felt it right to include two symbolic moments in such an important anniversary edition.” Indeed, it will be the film Underground which opens this year’s festival, an anarchic and surreal tale on the dissolution of Yugoslavia by Emir Kusturica, who won Cannes’ Palme d’Or in 1995, while another great work is scheduled to close the event: Ulysses’ Gaze by Theo Angelopoulos, who won the Grand Prize during that same year at Cannes.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

The core of the festival programme is composed of three international competitions dedicated to features films, shorts and documentaries. Thirteen titles will grace the Feature Film Competition (whose jury is composed of director Adina Pintilie, producer Ewa Puszczyńska and programmer-film critic Paolo Bertolin), including two stories on the topic of paternity in the form of Serbian work Father [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Srdan Golubović
film profile
]
by Srdan Golubović (which scooped the Audience Award in the most recent Berlinale’s Panorama line-up) and Andromeda Galaxy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: More Raça
film profile
]
by More Raça, set in Kosovo. Formerly screened in Sundance, Visar Morina’s Exile [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Visar Morina
film profile
]
also moves between Kosovo and Germany, while Piotr Domalewski’s I Never Cry [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Piotr Domalewski
film profile
]
unfolds between Poland and Ireland and shines a realistic light on the difficulties faced by families separated by emigration.

Likewise examining the theme of immigration is Bulgarian film Fear [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ivaylo Hristov
film profile
]
by Ivaylo Hristov, a drama which morphs into a comedy about a woman who is prepared to do battle with her entire village in order to welcome a migrant into her home. From modern-day Europe we move to that of the immediate post-war period in Andrej Smirnov’s A Frenchman, which explores Moscow in 1957, as seen through the eyes of a French student, and in Šarūnas Bartas’s In the Dusk [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sharunas Bartas
film profile
]
, which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival and presented in a world premiere in San Sebastian. Arriving from Greece we find Pari [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Siamak Etemadi
film profile
]
by Siamak Etemadi, which sees an Iranian mother combing the streets of Athens in search of her student son, while Romania offers up the satirical comedy The Campaign [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marian Crişan
film profile
]
by Marian Crișan, in which a politician chases votes to obtain a seat in Strasbourg. Serbian film My Morning Laughter [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Marko Đorđević tells of a thirty-year-old’s much belated coming of age, while two of the most surprising works from last year also feature on the agenda: Polish title Sweat [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Magnus von Horn
film profile
]
by Magnus von Horn, which was also selected for Cannes and follows three days in the life of a “fitness-influencer”, and Georgian work Beginning [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dea Kulumbegashvili
film profile
]
by Dea Kulumbegashvili, which was selected for Cannes and triumphed in San Sebastian, telling the tale of female Jehovah’s Witness Yana who is attacked by an extremist group. Last but not least in this showcase, we find Faruk Lončarević’s film So She Doesn't Live [+see also:
film review
film profile
]
, which shines a light on the most heinous case of homicide in post-war Bosnia, not to mention a Special Screening, out of competition, for Azerbaijani film In Between Dying [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Hilal Baydarov, whose name also appears in the documentary competition line-up alongside Nails in My Brain.

Ten titles will battle it out in the Documentary Competition: Acasă, My Home [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Radu Ciorniciuc
film profile
]
by Romania’s Radu Ciorniciuc, which was honoured in Sundance; Armenian film  Blockade by Hakob Melkonyan; two titles from Croatia: Landscape Zero [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Bruno Pavić and Once Upon a Youth [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Ivan Ramljak; from Russia Town of Glory [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Dmitrij Bogolyubov; German offering Garage People [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Natal’ja Jefimkina; from Austria Please Hold the Line [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Pavel Cuzuioc; Romania’s Holy Father [+see also:
film review
film profile
]
by Andrei Dăscălescu; Lithuania’s Gentle Warriors [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Marija Stonytė, and the afore-mentioned Nails in My Brain.

Two new sections will bolster the festival’s traditional array of competitions: Off the Beaten…Screens, which is dedicated to new cinematographic forms, and Wild Roses: Directors in Europe, while five directors are set to “attend” the event (and take part in a panel discussion), albeit online, namely Hanna Polak with Something Better To Come [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, Agnieszka Smoczyńska with The Lure [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Agnieszka Smoczyńska
film profile
]
, Anna Zamecka with Communion [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, Anna Jadowska with Wild Roses [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anna Jadowska
film profile
]
and Jagoda Szelc with Tower. A Bright Day [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jagoda Szelc
film profile
]
.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from Italian)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy