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FESTIVALS Portugal

Espinho gears up for the 12th FEST

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- Today sees the start of the latest edition of the gathering, which includes training and pitching events in addition to film screenings

Espinho gears up for the 12th FEST
Aloys by Tobias Nolle

For its 12th edition, which kicks off today, the Espinho-based FEST – New Directors/New Films has prepared a series of screenings of short and feature-length titles, besides the traditional Training Ground and Pitching Forum, which are the festival’s most distinctive events.

Several European films stand out in the main competition section, which focuses exclusively on first and second feature-length projects (fiction and documentaries) by emerging directors from around the globe. Tobias Nolle’s Aloys [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tobias Nölle
film profile
]
will arrive in Espinho flaunting the FIPRESCI Prize that it bagged at the latest Berlinale. It will be up against other equally challenging titles, such as Granny’s Dancing on the Table [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, a film mixing live action and animation by Swedish director Hanna Skold, and Polish director Kuba Czekaj’s Baby Bump [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kuba Czekaj
film profile
]
. FEST’s main competition has also reserved a place for Germany’s Treppe Aufwaerts [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Mia Meyer, Sweden’s Flocking [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Beata Gårdeler
film profile
]
by Beata Gardeler, Poland’s Alisa in Warland by duo Alisa Kovalenko and Liubov Durakova, the Portuguese documentary Brothers by Pedro Magano, and three non-European features or European co-productions: Anna Rose Holmer’s The Fits [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(USA, Italy), Juan Fernandez Gebauer and Nicolas Suarez’s Easy Ball (Argentina), and Mehrdad Oskouei’s Starless Dreams (Iran).

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Six other sections will focus on short films, student projects and the recent filmographies from three specific countries (Portugal, Ireland and Iceland).

FEST also hosts the Training Ground, an event held in parallel with the screenings, which – perhaps more than the film selection itself – is responsible for granting FEST its growing international reputation, particularly among young adults and student audiences. This year, several personalities have been invited to hold a series of workshops and master classes covering a number of aspects of the film business. Among the VIP guests are Australian DoP Stuart Dryburgh (Alice Through the Looking Glass), UK agent and former BAFTA chairman Tim Corrie, UK screenwriter Jon Croker, US editor Mark Sanger (Gravity [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile
]
), Portuguese director Gonçalo Galvao Teles and Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr (The Turin Horse [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Béla Tarr
film profile
]
), among others.

The FEST Pitching Forum will be divided into four sessions: feature, short, doc and TV series. Participants will make a five-minute pitch, followed by feedback from experts and the possibility of individual meetings. This year, the experts include producer Gareth Wiley, scriptwriter Guillermo Garcia Ramos and ICA expert Nuno Fonseca.

Lastly, New World [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, a Polish film by Elzbieta Benkowska, Michal Wawrzecki and Lukasz Ostalski, will be shown out of competition on the closing night (27 June).

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