Coixet featured at Verona’s Schermi d’Amore

by Michela Greco

16/04/2009 - Spanish director-screenwriter-documentary filmmaker Isabel Coixet will be at the heart of the 2009 Schermi d’Amore (April 24-29), the film festival in Verona dedicated to big screen melodrama.

Five of her films made in the last 10 years – including the local premiere of Elegy [trailer], starring Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz, to be released in Italy on April 30 by 01 Distribution – will be the focus of one of the festival’s two retrospectives. The other celebrates legendary British director David Lean, with 10 restored prints of films made from 1942-54, before he began making international blockbusters such as Doctor Zhivago. This is the first part of a retrospective that will be completed over the course of the year as part of “Festival Tuesdays” promoted by the Verona Film Festival.

The competition features 10 recent films, seven of which are European, which depict love in the new millennium. These include The Blind Sunflowers (Spain) José Luis Cuerda, winner of a Goya for Best Adapted Screenplay; Stéphanie Duvivier’s Un Roman Policier [trailer]; and A Year Ago in Winter [trailer] (Germany) by Caroline Link. Japan will be represented by Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, an intense look at the collapse of patriarchal authority in the country.

Other sections include the non-competitive Panorama, a selection of titles from other festivals and restored films, including Nicolas Saada’s Spy(ies) [trailer] (France); Emily Atef’s The Stranger in Me [trailer] (Germany), about post-partum depression; and the Cinémathèque Française’s restored print of Max Ophuls’ Lola Montès.