26/04/2005

Delayed from autumn to spring, the 10th European Film Festival finishes today in Gdansk, where it has been running since last Thursday. For the first time, the festival, whose target audience is youth, choose to hold screenings from the Old Continent in three Polish towns, beginning with Warsaw from the 15th to the 20th April, followed by Gdansk from the 19th to the 24th. In total, 40 films were shown, among them Polish premières for 17 European features, notably in the section entitled Panorama of European Cinema, made up of 13 of the best films of recent years and 4 Polish productions. Pregi (Les Raies) by Magdalena Piekorz, the best film of the year Wesele (The Wedding) by Wojciech Smarzowski My Summer of Love by Pawel Pawlikowski and Tulipany by Jacek Borcuch.

The selected European films, chosen for their quality rather than country of origin, offered a top quality range, with France firmly in the spotlight with Comme une image [+see also:
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film profile] by Agnes Jaoui, Exiles by Tony Gatlif 5x2 [+see also:
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film profile] by Frangois Ozon and Woman of Honour by Claude Chabrol. Equally honoured was the United Kingdom with Vera Drake [+see also:
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film profile] by Mike Leigh, Girl With A Pearl Earing [+see also:
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film profile] by Peter Webber, Code 46 [+see also:
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film profile] by Michael Winterbottom and The Mother by Roger Michell. Alejandro Amenabar ( The Sea Inside [+see also:
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film profile]), Pedro Almodsvar (A Bad Education [+see also:
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film profile]) and Gracia Querejeta (Hector) offered a view of Spanish cinema while Italy offered two of its jewels The Consequences of Love by Paolo Sorrentino and I am not afraid [+see also:
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interview: Gabriele Salvatores
film profile] by Gabriele Salvatores. As for Germany, they travelled to Poland with Head on [+see also:
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film profile] by Fatih Akin, The Fall [+see also:
film review
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interview: Bernd Eichinger
interview: Joachim Fest
interview: Oliver Hirschbiegel
film profile] by Olivier Hirschbiegel and King of Thieves by Ivan Fila coproduced with the Czech republic, Slovakia, France and Austria. But Greece wasn t overlooked with The Only Journey of His Life by Lakis Papastathis, nor were Hungary with Kontroll [+see also:
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film profile] by Nimrsd Antal and Croatia with A Wonderful Night in Split by Arsen Anton Ostojic. Finally, the Scandinavian countries also took part with Popular Music from Vittula by Reza Bagher (Sweden-Finland) and The Beautiful Country by Hans Peter Moland (Norway).

(Translated from French)