Titanic forges ahead despite drastic funding cut

by Fabien Lemercier

08/04/2011 - Budapest’s Titanic International Film Festival saw its budget drop by over 30% just two weeks away from the opening of its 18th edition, when the Hungarian State suddenly cut the funding it had been granting since the event’s creation in 1994.

Titanic, the most important international film festival in Hungary, has nonetheless decided to forge ahead by reducing the festival’s length by two days (April 8-16) and by whittling down the programme, the number of invitations and promotional expenses. These drastic decisions haven’t prevented Titanic from offering a high-quality line-up with 52 features spread over ten sections, including zooms on Scandinavian, French and Irish cinema.

Seven titles will screen in international competition, including four European features: Carlos [trailer] by France’s Olivier Assayas, Essential Killing [trailer, film focus] by Poland’s Jerzy Skolimowki, Slovakian/Czech co-production The House [trailer] by Zuzana Liová and Savage [trailer] by Swedish duo Martin Jern and Emil Larsson.

The French Shoals section will present Gérald Hustache-Mathieu’s Nobody Else But You [trailer], Romain Gavras’s Our Day Will Come [trailer], Fabrice Gobert’s Lights Out [trailer], Fabienne Berthaud’s Lily Sometimes [trailer], Djinn Carrénard’s Donoma [trailer] and David Dusa’s Flowers of Evil [trailer].

The Nordic Lights programme includes six titles, hailing from Sweden (Jesper Ganslandt’s The Ape [trailer]), Finland (Aleksi Salmenperä’s Bad Family [trailer] and Olli Saarela’s Priest of Evil [trailer]), Norway (Hans Petter Moland’s A Somewhat Gentle Man [trailer, film focus]) and Denmark (Kasper Holten’s Juan [trailer] and Thomas Vinterberg’s Submarino [trailer, film focus]).

Irish productions take pride of place in the Green Island section with The Fading Light by Ivan Kavanagh, One Hundred Mornings [trailer] by Conor Horgan, Perrier’s Bounty [trailer] by Ian Fitzgibbon, Savage [trailer] by Brendan Muldowney, Snap by Carmel Winters and Zonad by John and Kieran Carney.

To make audiences shudder, The Dark Side section will show Alan Butterworth’s Brit flick The Drummond Will, The Silence by Germany’s Baran bo Odar, In the Shadows [trailer] by fellow German director Thomas Arslan and Vampires [trailer] by Belgium’s Vincent Lannoo.

Finally, Janus Metz’s Armadillo [trailer, film focus] will be shown in the documentary section; Romanian director Marian Crisan’s Morgen [trailer] will get a special screening; and Brit helmer Philippa Lowthorpe’s Five Daughters is in the Best of Raindance line-up.

(Translated from French)