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FESTIVALS Slovakia

Cinematik foregrounds Catalan cinema and up-and-coming European filmmakers

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- The Slovakian film festival presents recent offerings from around Europe

Cinematik foregrounds Catalan cinema and up-and-coming European filmmakers

The fledgling Cinematik Slovakian film festival will celebrate its tenth anniversary by spotlighting Catalan cinema. “Since its inception, the festival has always aimed to discover new cinematic worlds, and the films of the Catalan region are quite unknown, albeit very successful and interesting. In comparison with, for example, Central European cinema, it is completely different; it brings different stories and different poetics,” the festival’s artistic director, Vladimír Štric, explained to Cineuropa to justify why his team has decided to dedicate an entire section to this region of Spain.

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The line-up of contemporary Catalan films consists of the Locarno-awarded Story of My Death [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Albert Serra
film profile
]
 by Alberto SerraSergio Caballero’s The Distance [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
Augustí Vila’s The Mosquito Net [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
and Neus Ballús’ The Plague [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
. The special focus also covers the Cult & Beyond parallel section, through the screening of zombie tetralogy [Rec] [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza
interview: Julio Fernández
film profile
]
, the science-fiction thriller The Last Days [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Àlex and David Pastor
film profile
]
 by David and Àlex Pastor, and the winner of 13 Gaudí and nine Goya Awards and the official Spanish entry for the 84th Academy AwardsAugustí Villaronga’s Black Bread [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
. The festival’s guest of honour, Jaime Rosales, will personally accept the Respect Award, and the programmers have taken the opportunity to prepare a retrospective of his works. “Rosales continues in the best European tradition of auteur film; he goes his own way, which in certain aspects has a link to the cinema classics, but is in many ways very innovative, most notably in his film language and the dialogue with the viewers,” adds Štric.

For the fifth time, the Eye on Films support platform for first and second films is collaborating with the festival to prepare a selection of films by up-and-coming filmmakers, such as Eric Cherriere’s dark thriller Cruel [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, Stina Werenfels’ thought-provoking Dora or the Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Stina Werenfels
film profile
]
, the Latvian horror The Man in the Orange Jacket [+see also:
film review
interview: Aik Karapetian
interview: Roberts Vinovskis
film profile
]
 and the Michael Powell Award winner Hide and Seek [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, a British indie by Joanna Coates. “We have reduced the number of sections in order to arrange the programme better,” explains the artistic director. “There are two competition sections; the main Meeting Point Europe competition will screen a selection of 11 contemporary European films, picked by 15 European film critics from among the best European movies from mid-2014 to May 2015.”

Meeting Point Europe will present the domestic premiere of Yorgos Lanthimos’ long-awaited dystopian thriller The Lobster [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Yorgos Lanthimos
film profile
]
 and Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado’s latest outing, The Salt of the Earth [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, along with Ulrich Seidl’s provocative documentary In the Basement [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, Peter Strickland’s surreal and sensual The Duke of Burgundy [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 and Céline Sciamma’s drama Girlhood [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Céline Sciamma
interview: Céline Sciamma
film profile
]
. Domestic production will also maintain a solid position within the festival’s programme: the programmers have decided to introduce Peter Bebjak’s third feature, the psychological drama The Cleaner [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Martin Žiaran
interview: Peter Bebjak
film profile
]
, as a pre-premiere and to premiere the latest documentary by Matej MináčThrough the Eyes of the Photographer. Ivan Ostrochovský’s docudrama Koza [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ivan Ostrochovský
film profile
]
 and Jakub Kroner’s animated feature Lokalfilmis [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
 are also part of the In the House domestic production section.

The Cinematik International Film Festival runs from 10 September until 15 September in the Slovakian spa town of Piešťany.

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