11/03/2010

From March 13-20, the 24th Freiburg International Film Festival will open its doors and showcase treasures from faraway lands. For the past three years, Edouard Waintrop has headed this unmissable film lovers’ event, which presents a line-up of works from the “other world” of cinema. The festival’s success lies mainly in the way it boldly offers a web of “perspectives” whose common denominator is a passion for cinema and a desire to surprise.

The international competition includes 13 films from Asia, Latin America, the Caucasus and the Near East. Debut films – such as Natalia Smirnoff’s Puzzle [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], shown in competition at the Berlin Film Festival – will screen alongside works by established directors such as Brillante Mendoza’s Lola.

Waintrop’s flair has been proven by the recent Oscar triumph of Argentinean director Juan José Campanella’s The Secret In Their Eyes [+see also:
trailer
making of
Interview Juan José Campanella [IT]
Interview Ricardo Darín [IT]
Interview Soledad Villemin [IT]
film profile] (Best Foreign Language Film Oscar), which was chosen some time ago as the festival’s closing film.

There will be six panoramas at this promising edition of the festival. “Reykjavik, Sofia” will present a selection of contemporary films from Europe’s border regions, such as Romania, the setting for Corneliu Porumboiu’s Police, Adjective [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Corneliu Porumboiu
film profile] and Iceland in Óskar Jónasson’s Reykjavik Rotterdam [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. Slovenia and Bulgaria will also be represented by Damjan Kozole’s Slovenian Girl [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Kamen Kalev’s Eastern Plays [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kamen Kalev
film profile] (LUX Prize finalist), respectively.

“Buccaneer Souls”, the retrospective dedicated to the work of Carlos Reichenbach and Jorge Furtado reveals the vitality of Brazilian cinema; “Yakuza Graveyard” will present seven titles by Kinji Fukasaku, known for his famous film Battle Royale; and “Moi, un Noir” (“I, A Black Man”) brings together several gems by French filmmaker-ethnologist Jean Rouch, who gave Africa a voice like no other.

Finally, “Walking the Streets of Moscow” will screen 15 Russian films, including rare titles such as Georgij Danelija’s Walking the Streets of Moscow, Alexei Guerman’s Twenty Days Without War, Kira Mouratova’s Brief Encounters and Gleb Panfilov’s No Path Through Fire.