26/08/2005

The Montreal World Film Festival (26 August – 5 September), presided over this year by Theo Angelopoulos, will present the world premiere of Henker, an Austrian co-production by the Swiss director Simon Aeby.
This period movie is set in Tyrol in the 16th Century. Two orphans raised by the church have sworn an oath of eternal brotherhood, a promise not easy to keep when the Inquisition starts, since one has become a soldier and the other a monk. While the film itself questions the notion of fraternity, the achievement of the film’s production team is, on the contrary, well-suited to the main purpose of the World Film Festival (which is the counterpart of the more commercial Toronto Festival): to enhance cultural diversity. Indeed, the Austrian producer Allegro Film collaborated with the UK (Film and Music Entertainment), Switzerland (T&C Film), Luxembourg (Samsa Film), Germany (Home Run Pictures), and Hungary (Eurofilm Studio). Henker also received state aids and was supported by several regional funds.

Silentium [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Dor Film), a detective story dealing with religion made by Wolfgang Murnberger, will also be screened within the section ‘Focus on World Cinema’.

(Translated from French)