24/09/2019 - From 4-10 October, the Italian city will host the 24th edition of the event helmed by Gabriele Salvatores, with 7 titles screening in the International Feature Film Competition

New dates and a brand new setting are in the offing for the Milan Film Festival, which will be held from 4-10 October at The Space Cinema Odeon, with Gabriele Salvatores heading up artistic direction for the second year running, flanked by Alessandro Beretta. The twenty-fourth edition of the event will also be launching its new Industry section, which is scheduled to run from Saturday 5-Tuesday 8 October.

The opening of this year’s Festival has been entrusted to the new stoner comedy by Harmony Korine, The Beach Bum [+see also:
trailer
film profile], starring Matthew McConaughey, and two competitive sections are likewise in the line-up, namely the International Feature Film Competition, which comprises 7 first and second works set to be screened in Italian premieres, and the International Short Film Competition, comprising 41 shorts, all helmed by directors under 40 years of age and hailing from more than 30 different countries.

“Change” is the theme uniting all of the works selected within the International Feature Film Competition; first and foremost in the sense of growth, a “coming of age” - that is, the transition to adulthood - but also as regards a shift in mentality or social status, such as that observed in the American work Swallow [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (US/France) by Carlo Mirabella-Davis. For its part, Koko-di Koko-da [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Johannes Nyholm
film profile] (Switzerland/Denmark), Johannes Nyholm’s second film after the cult work The Giant [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Johannes Nyholm
film profile] (2016), touches upon the theme of a battle, while A Certain Kind of Silence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michal Hogenauer
film profile] (Czech Republic, The Netherlands, Latvia) by Czech director Michal Hogenauer, follows a young woman who unwittingly ends up in an ultra-conservative sect. The Sharks [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (Argentina/Spain/Uruguay) by Lucía Garibaldi explores a relationship between teenagers, whereas Guerilla [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], by Hungary’s György Mór Kárpáti, sees the torments of youth come face to face with the cruelty of 1849’s Hungarian Revolution. In O Fim do Mundo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Basil Da Cunha
film profile] by Swiss-Portuguese director Basil Da Cunha, the outskirts of Lisbon form the backdrop of a violent but choral story of one young man’s education, while the group rite of passage embarked upon in American director Tyler Taormina’s Ham on Rye is full of colour and song. Jury judges will include the likes of actress Margherita Buy, associate editor of British film magazine Little White Lies Hannah Woodhead and screenwriter Maurizio Braucci (Martin Eden [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pietro Marcello
film profile] by Pietro Marcello).

Looking towards the national cinema landscape, “Incontri italiani/Italian Encounters”, will showcase the richness and vivacity of independent Italian film, screening works such as Fulci For Fake [+see also:
trailer
interview: Simone Scafidi
film profile] by Simone Scafidi and The Disappearance of My Mother [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Beniamino Barrese in the presence of their directors. Other sections featuring in the Festival programme are “The Outsiders”, offering up titles by now well-known masters, including The Souvenir [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by English filmmaker Joanna Hogg, Technoboss [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: João Nicolau
film profile] by Portugal’s João Nicolau and First Love [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Takashi Miike; “My Screen”, which will see social-media celebrities and artists come together to reveal their favourite films; “Focus Animation”, offering a sneak peek of new trends in international animation; “Immigration Day”, an event which has been organised in collaboration with Naga for a number of years now, with this year’s edition centring on Ai Weiwei’s new documentary The Rest [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], and; last but not least, “Special Events”, where a number of exclusive premieres are set to be held, along the lines of Nyman’s Earthquakes – “work in progress” ungraded and with temporary sound mix by the composer and musician Michael Nyman.

(Translated from Italian)