28/01/2008

Saviou’s Square [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Krzysztof Krauze and Joanna Kos-Krauze walked away with the main prize at the Trieste Film Festival, which ended yesterday with the success of a second Polish title, Time to Die by Dorota Kędzierzawska, winner of the Audience Award.

The competition jury – comprising producer Elda Guidinetti, Serge Sobczynski (curator of “Tout le cinéma du monde” at Cannes) and the artistic director of the Karlovy Vary festival, Eva Zaoralová – unanimously voted for a film of relentless harshness that pays close attention to the psychological nuances of its characters. In the story, a young couple, his mother – an extraordinary Ewa Wencel – and their children are forced to live together and suffer a daily domestic hell.

The jurors also came up with two Special Mentions, for Time to Die and Installation of Love by Slovenian director Maja Weiss. The latter is a satirical comedy that at the festival (like at home) divided audiences into two very distinct camps.

The documentary competition ended with an ex-aequo prize. Directors Corso Salani and Laila Pakalniņa the producer Dumitru Marian awarded the private and the political: German title Life Is a Long Lasting Day by Svenja Klüh depicts the attempt of a young, unwed mother to start a family with her new boyfriend while Estonia’s Kalinovski Square looks at the political situation in Belarus, directed by one of the most sarcastic (and censored) members of opposition against Alexander Lukašenko, Jurij Chaščevatskij.

The Best Short Film was deemed to be Turkish title My Mother Learns Cinema by Nesimi Yetik (previously in competition at Berlin), with three Special Mentions: Porno (by German director Jan Wagner but produced by the Łodź School), It’s My Turn by Ismet Ergün (a German/Turkish co-production) and Slovenian film On the Sunny Side of the Alps by Janez Burger.

And while the festival’s abundant audiences avoided the competition’s most noted names (above all, Jan Svěrák and Ulrich Seidl), they awarded solid dramatic works. The top Audience Award winner, Pora umierać, is an intense portrait of a woman suspended between humour and melancholy. The number two and three choices, respectively, were Metod Pevec’s Slovenian title Estrellita [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Danijel Hočevar
interview: Metod Pevec
interview: Nerina Kocjančič
film profile], the moving tale of a social redemption through music, and Srdan Golubović’s existential noir The Trap [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the Serbian/German/Hungarian co-production that was just a step away from an Oscar nomination.

The documentary most acclaimed by audiences was The Secret of Deva by Anca Miruna Lazarescu, on the city-symbol of Romania and its star athlete. It was followed by Slovenia’s The Children from Petriček Hill by Miran Zupanič and Giedrė Beinoriūtė’s Lithuanian title Grandpa and Grandma, which mixes archive material, animation excerpts and historical photos to tell the story of the director’s grandparents, who were exiled to Siberia by the Soviets.

(Translated from Italian)