FESTIVALS Luxembourg
Discovery Zone, take two
by Boyd van Hoeij
23/02/2012 - The second edition of the Discovery Zone Luxembourg City Film Festival will kick off on March 1. The festival is the follow-up to the Grand Duchy’s capital city-based DirActor’s Festival, which was revamped last year as Discovery Zone. The overhaul was welcomed by many and was more than cosmetic, as the focus of the festival has shifted from films by actors-directors to films that are real discoveries for Luxembourg audiences.
The main selection is called Discover Selected and showcases 11 features from places as far as Samoa and New Zealand (The Orator), Iran (Mourning) and Egypt (Bus 678). European discoveries include Alps [trailer] from Dogtooth [trailer, film focus] director Giorgos Lanthimos and black-and-white animated film Alois nebel [trailer] from Tomas Lunak.
Documentaries are presented in the Discover Hot Docs section, where titles include Whore’s Glory (sold by Luxembourg company PTD); the nuclear waste documentary Into Eternity; Werner Herzog’s Into the Abyss, about capital punishment, and Finnish entry The Steam of Life.
Further sections include Discover 6-18, a section aimed at younger viewers, and Home Discovery, which spotlights the local (co-)productions Allez Eddy (co-produced by Delux Productions); D’Symmetrie vum Päiperlek (Iris Production S.A.); The Life of Another by Sylvie Testud (PTD Studio) and Christopher Stark’s Taboo (Iris Productions).
A special focus on Nordic films, Open Discovery, includes Norwegian box-office success Headhunters [trailer]; comedy Sons of Norway [trailer] by Jens Lien and cutting racism-themed film Play [trailer, film focus] (finalist of the Lux Prize 2011, European Parliament) by Swedish director Ruben Östlund.
A photo exhibition by Luxembourg-based celebrity photographer Fabrizio Maltese is also part of the festival, as are several workshops with subjects such as film criticism and screenplay writing.
The festival runs March 1-9 in Luxembourg City. The biannual Luxembourg Oscars, the Lëtzebuerger Filmpräis, will be handed out on the last day of the festival.
