This year’s Pesaro a “slow festival” against crisis
“The Festival is more compact. At a moment of crisis, we wanted to organise a ‘slow festival’, with fewer but more important films”, says Giovanni Spagnoletti, artistic director of the Pesaro Film Festival (June 20-28).
This year’s international focus is on contemporary Russian cinema, with an in-depth programme of 23 features, video art and experimental films.
The main sections include the competition Pesaro Nuovo Cinema, which pays close attention to the East and Latin America (as well as Russia). Europe is represented by Benjamin Heisenberg’s Austrian/German title The Robber [+see also:
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trailer
interview: Benjamin Heisenberg
film profile], a thriller inspired by the true story of thief-marathon runner Pump Gun Ronnie. The film will be shown in the one of the open-air screenings of Cinema in the Square.
Europeans are more conspicuous in the non-competitive Bande à Part sidebar that includes, among others, Eastern Drift [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Lithuania’s Sharunas Bartas, the beloved filmmaker of the most intransigent film lovers; and the diptych Cycling the Frame (1988) and The Invisible Frame (2009) that traces, on bicycle, the Berlin Wall. The films are directed by Cynthia Beatt – who has been living in her adopted Germany since 1975 – and star Tilda Swinton.
The section also features Italian film Foschia Pesci Africa Sonno Nausea Fantasia (the titles is a line from the Paolo Conte song “Genova Per Noi”), by Andrea De Sica and Daniele Vicari: six stories of dynamic Ligurian youths trying to create lives for themselves amid various problems and uncertainties.
As per usual, the Event Special is a retrospective on an Italian filmmaker, this year Carlo Lizzani. Born in 1922, the prolific director has tried his hand at the most disparate genres, including historical biopics, social films, comedies and westerns. For the occasion, Lizzani will present Il Mio Novecento, a new work that in approximately three hours spans the previous century through images from his films.
(Translated from Italian)
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