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FESTIVALS Italy

The MIX Festival of Lesbian, Gay and Queer Culture cinema returns to Milan

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- The festival, taking place from 21 to 24 June, is opened by Favola by Sebastiano Mauri, featuring Filippo Timi, and is welcoming guests Trudie Styler and Alex Lawther with their film Freak Show

The MIX Festival of Lesbian, Gay and Queer Culture cinema returns to Milan
Favola by Sebastiano Mauri

This will be the 32nd edition of the Milan MIX Festival of Lesbian-Gay-Queer Cinema, which is set to run from 21 to 24 June, not only in the comfort of its usual home, the Teatro Strehler, but also in the additional location of the Teatro Studio Melato for the very first time in the festival’s history. The programme was put together by Giampaolo Marzi and is directed and produced by Debora Guma, Rafael Maniglia and Andrea Ferrari, in partnership with Immaginaria. 

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Opening the festival outside of the competition will be Favola [+see also:
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by Sebastiano Mauri, a big screen adaptation of the similarly named stage-show, written by and featuring Filippo Timi. The film, a Palomar-Rai Cinema production, distributed by Nexo Digital, will be presented in person by Sebastiano Mauri and Filippo Timi, before being released in cinemas as a special event on 25, 26, 27 June only. The closing ceremony, meanwhile, will welcome director Trudie Styler, wife to Sting, and young British actor Alex Lawther (The End Of The F***ing World), who plays the lead in Styler’s film, Freak Show.

Themes such as bulimia, coming out and asserting our identity within society and within the family unit, are common to many of the 14 titles selected for the Feature Film Competition. The romantic comedy, Just Friends, by Dutch director Ellen Smit will enjoy its world premiere at the festival, telling the story of the loving relationship between the Syrian Yad and the young Joris, both of whom suffer from the harsh judgement meted out by their respective maternal figures. The process of finding ourselves and clashing with the family unit, meanwhile, are themes shared by two titles hailing from the most recent Berlinale: the debut feature film by Israeli director, Tsivia Barkai Yacov, Red Cow [+see also:
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(whose lead actress, Avigayil Koevary, will also attend the screening) and the rural Argentine-Chilean drama, Marilyn, Martín Rodríguez Redondo’s first work.

Fresh from the Cannes Film Festival comes Knife + Heart [+see also:
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interview: Nicolas Maury
interview: Yann Gonzalez
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by Yann Gonzalez, one of the most significant directors working in queer cinema today, who has already taken part in the MIX Festival a number of times with his earlier works. Another absolute must for the festival is Tinta Bruta by Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon, which recently clinched the Berlinale Teddy Award for Best Film on an LGBT theme. Three intense love stories, meanwhile, are at the heart of three works directed by women: the opening film of the last London LGBT Festival, My Days of Mercy [+see also:
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by Tali Shalom-Ezer, the debut work of young Polish filmmaker, Olga Chajdas, Nina [+see also:
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(fresh from the most recent International Film Festival Rotterdam), and Montana [+see also:
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by the Israeli director Limor Shmila. Among other titles on the billing is the ironic, audacious and pop extravaganza Postcards from London [+see also:
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by Steve McLean, which charts the journey of drop-dead gorgeous Jim from the provincial county of Essex to the buzz of London’s Soho, where he soon becomes hot property on the London art scene as a highly desired and in-demand muse.

Seven works have been selected for the Documentary Competition, among which Dykes, camera, action!by Caroline Berler, which tells the enthralling story of lesbian cinema from the 70s through to the present day using film images, and whose European premiere will be held at the festival; Queerama [+see also:
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by Daisy Asquith, taking us back in time to chart the century-long history of the LGBT movement in England, and; MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A. [+see also:
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by Stephen Loveridge, which recently premiered worldwide at the Sundance Film Festival, while its first Italian screening kicked off the Biografilm Festival – International Celebration of Lives 2018. 

Events taking place in parallel include the MIX Festival’s partnership with the Milan Film Network, as part of the In Progress MFN initiative, which will offer the first production workshop dedicated to developing audio-visual projects by young directors, and which will, this year, be in a position to award funding to the project best tackling the theme of gender identity.

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(Translated from Italian)

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