The 12th edition of the Küstendorf International Film and Music Festival (11-16 January 2019), held in the charming traditional Serbian hamlet of Mećavnik, originally built for Emir Kusturica's Life Is a Miracle and located close to the border with Bosnia-Herzegovina, will be marked by the meeting of two years, as the Orthodox New Year's Eve will be celebrated there on the night of 13 January. But it will also, as usual, offer a selection of aspiring filmmakers the chance to meet established directors keen on sharing their experience with the next generation.

The short-film competition showing off these young talents' works, which the festival programme is mainly built around (read our interview with Kusturica, published for the 10th edition), comprises 21 short films (selected from among a total of 718 submissions) hailing from Serbia, Macedonia, Russia, Poland (the most strongly represented country, with three contenders), Switzerland, Spain, Germany, France, Norway, Turkey, Israel, Canada, the USA, Australia, Cuba, Syria, Iran and the Philippines. The three-member jury that will bestow the Golden, Silver and Bronze Eggs upon its favourite shorts consists of Canadian-American actress Stana Katic, Serbian publisher and writer Slobodan Despot, and French documentary director and audiovisual producer Tancrède Ramonet. French DoP Michel Amathieu (who has worked with Kusturica, Volker Schlöndorff and Agnieszka Holland, amongst others) will choose the winner of the Vilko Filač Cinematography Award.

The first workshop will be held by the director of Underground after the screening of his documentary El Pepe, a Supreme Life [+lee también:
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entrevista: Emir Kusturica
ficha de la película], while the second will be dedicated to Alice Rohrwacher's Cannes-awarded Happy as Lazzaro [+lee también:
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entrevista: Alice Rohrwacher
ficha de la película], represented by the film's cast, including Sergi López. French director David Oelhoffen will then talk about Close Enemies [+lee también:
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entrevista: David Oelhoffen
ficha de la película], and the same day, months after the world premiere of his The Gentle Indifference of the World [+lee también:
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entrevista: Adilkhan Yerzhanov
ficha de la película] in competition at Cannes, Kazakh filmmaker Adilkhan Yerzhanov will be present in Mećavnik for the fourth class, followed by this year's guest star, Matt Dillon, and then by another Croisette winner from Italy, Marcello Fonte, who gave a heart-rending performance in Matteo Garrone's Dogman [+lee también:
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entrevista: Matteo Garrone
ficha de la película]. The last two workshops will also have an Italian flavour: producer Andrea Gambetta, known for his work with Wim Wenders on The Salt of the Earth [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] and the recent Pope Francis: A Man of His Word [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], will proffer advice to the young talents after the screening of the latter film in the Damned Yard Theatre. Then, brothers Damiano and Fabio D'Innocenzo will close the series with a talk on their dark debut feature, Boys Cry [+lee también:
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entrevista: Damiano y Fabio D’Innocenzo
ficha de la película].

Most of the films accompanying the workshops form the Contemporary Trends section. Matt Dillon will speak after a screening of Gus Van Sant's 1989 title Drugstore Cowboy as part of the Retrospective of Greatness section, which also includes Miloš Forman's Taking Off and Bernardo Bertolucci's five-and-a-half-hour masterpiece 1900. Amongst the more recent movies in the programme, it is also worth mentioning Ivan Salatić's Montenegrin story You Have the Night [+lee también:
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entrevista: Ivan Salatić
ficha de la película] (New Authors) and Alina Skrzeszewska's Game Girls [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] (Küstendorf Presents).