23/02/2012 - The second edition of the Discovery Zone Luxembourg City Film Festival will kick off on March 1

The second edition of the Discovery Zone Luxembourg City Film Festival will kick off on March 1. The festival is the follow-up to the Grand Duchy’s capital city-based DirActor’s Festival, which was revamped last year as Discovery Zone. The overhaul was welcomed by many and was more than cosmetic, as the focus of the festival has shifted from films by actors-directors to films that are real discoveries for Luxembourg audiences.

The main selection is called Discover Selected and showcases 11 features from places as far as Samoa and New Zealand (The Orator), Iran (Mourning) and Egypt (Bus 678). European discoveries include Alps [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] from Dogtooth [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Yorgos Lanthimos
film profile] director Giorgos Lanthimos and black-and-white animated film Alois nebel [+see also:
trailer
film profile] from Tomas Lunak.

Documentaries are presented in the Discover Hot Docs section, where titles include Whore’s Glory (sold by Luxembourg company PTD); the nuclear waste documentary Into Eternity; Werner Herzog’s Into the Abyss, about capital punishment, and Finnish entry The Steam of Life.

Further sections include Discover 6-18, a section aimed at younger viewers, and Home Discovery, which spotlights the local (co-)productions Allez Eddy (co-produced by Delux Productions); D’Symmetrie vum Päiperlek (Iris Production S.A.); The Life of Another by Sylvie Testud (PTD Studio) and Christopher Stark’s Taboo (Iris Productions).

A special focus on Nordic films, Open Discovery, includes Norwegian box-office success Headhunters [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; comedy Sons of Norway [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Jens Lien and cutting racism-themed film Play [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ruben Östlund
interview: Ruben Ostlund
film profile] (finalist of the Lux Prize 2011, European Parliament) by Swedish director Ruben Östlund.

A photo exhibition by Luxembourg-based celebrity photographer Fabrizio Maltese is also part of the festival, as are several workshops with subjects such as film criticism and screenplay writing.

The festival runs March 1-9 in Luxembourg City. The biannual Luxembourg Oscars, the Lëtzebuerger Filmpräis, will be handed out on the last day of the festival.