11/10/2022 - Exploring the art of the real, the Norwegian event focuses on cinema and discovers other forms of art that celebrate creativity, with a total of 35 films being showcased

Now in its second year of existence, the Mirage Film Festival is focused on the art of the real, as the festival foregrounds both art and form. Running from 12-16 October in Oslo, the gathering is showcasing 25 creative and visual feature-length films along with ten shorts that all have reality as their starting point.

In line with its commitment to giving due credit to the highly creative and artistic contribution of crews this year, Mirage has added four awards to acknowledge the craft of cinema: the MIRAGE Awards for Directing, Editing, Cinematography and Sound Design. In each category, there are four nominees, and the awards are decided on by a one-person jury system, whereby a respected professional in each field determines the winner and hands out the prizes, as a personal form of recognition from one artist to another.

Norwegian writer-director Eskil Vogt will pick the winner of the Directing Award, world-renowned photographer and cinematographer Sir Roger Deakins will decide on the victor of the Cinematography Award, French editor Anne Fabini will do likewise for Editing, while Finnish sound designer and Foley artist Heiki Kossi will pick the laureate of the Sound Design Award. For a list of the nominated films, please click here. Also worth mentioning is the fact that from this year onwards, Mirage will ask a renowned artist to design a unique sculpture as the award, and as such, the 2022 MIRAGE Award statue has been created by Lars Morell.

As for film curation, Mirage offers more room to hybrid films, such as 107 Mothers [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Peter Kerekes
film profile] by Peter Kerekes, Dry Ground Burning [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós, and Days by Tsai Ming-Liang. In terms of the classics at this edition, on the opening evening, Mirage will screen Mikhail Kaufman’s recently rediscovered silent film In Spring (1929), in collaboration with the Tromsø International Film Festival, with a live musical score performed by Ukrainians Roksana Smirnova and Misha Kalinin. Mirage is also showing Agnès Varda’s timeless film The Gleaners & I and the seminal classic Koyaanisqatsi by Godfrey Reggio. A second live cinema event is being organised, where Burial [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Emilija Škarnulytė will be merged with a live score by Helsinki-based experimental music artist and self-taught composer Timo Kaukolampi. The complete selection of films, along with the programme, can be found here.

Furthermore, a small retrospective of experimental Sensory Ethnography Lab filmmakers Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor is being organised, including their Cannes-premiered latest film, De humani corporis fabrica [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Véréna Paravel, Lucien Cast…
film profile]. As for the short-film programmes, one focused on Norwegian films and the other on international ones, they are curated by Flatpack and Nordisk Panorama programmer Sam Groves.

Mirage is also collaborating with Fotografihuset, showing new work from Tonje Bøe Birkeland’s ongoing series The Characters, where she stages and photographs herself as a series of female explorers in unknown terrain. This is also connected to S Nicholson’s short film The Discoverer of the Discoverers.

The festival will also host 08/15 - The Daily Lives of Death, a performance-art installation by Sarah Elena Schwerzmann, in which she explores the discrepancy between death as a taboo subject and as a means of entertainment.

Finally, every year, Mirage picks a Film of the Year, a movie that shows unique cinematic qualities, to be manifested as the visual profile of the festival for that year. For 2022, The Eclipse [+see also:
film review
interview: Nataša Urban
film profile] by Nataša Urban has been picked as said film.