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FESTIVALS UK

Flatpack returns to Birmingham for its ninth edition

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- A Roy Andersson tribute, Force Majeure and The Tribe are amongst the programme highlights

Flatpack returns to Birmingham for its ninth edition

The ninth Flatpack Film Festival (19-29 March) returns to Birmingham with a packed programme that includes 120 events taking place at 30 venues across the city. Flatpack’s Opening Night screening of Japanese auteur Yasujirô Ozu’s silent gangster classic Walk Cheerfully (1930) is accompanied by a traditional live performance by actress Tomoko Komura giving commentary and bringing character dialogue and sound effects to life. Birmingham Cathedral will play host to a live-score screening of Dziga Vertov’s hymn to cinema and the city, Man With a Movie Camera

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The festival’s focus on animation this year will see Cartoon d’Or winners Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels (Oh Willy…), the award-winning Belgian duo, lead a two-day stop-motion animation workshop. Flatpack also hosts the UK premiere of The Doghouse, a film installation by Danish artists Johan Knattrup Jensen, Mads Damsbo and Dark Matters where participants wearing Oculus Rift goggles are plunged into a Dogme-style fraught family situation.

Other highlights include a celebration of the films of Swedish director Roy Andersson, complementing the UK release of his new film, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Roy Andersson
film profile
]
, which won the Golden Lion at Venice. Fellow Swede Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ruben Östlund
film profile
]
is another highlight, as are Ukrainian director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s The Tribe [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, French filmmaker Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Céline Sciamma
interview: Céline Sciamma
film profile
]
, and Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova’s Uncle Tony, Three Fools and the Secret Service, a documentary that has become a flashpoint of controversy in Bulgaria.

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