13/06/2008

The 44th Pesaro Film Festival (June 21-29) has a distinctly European flavour because “taking at look at the Old Continent is a moral obligation,” says artistic director Giovanni Spagnoletti, convinced that globalisation brings with it a paradox. “Italian audiences know a lot about cinema from the far east,” he commented at today’s press conference, “but very little about films from neighbouring countries.”

Thus, this year’s international focus, on contemporary German cinema, comprises 18 films (features, medium-length films and documentaries) that attest to the vitality of the Germany of the new millennium. Besides established filmmakers (such as Philip Gröning, with Love, Money, Love, and Valeska Grisebach and her medium-length film Mein Stern), the retrospective primarily includes little-known names – at least to Italian audiences – such as Till Steinmetz, Fred Kelemen and Martin Gypkens.

The competition section offers eight first and second films, among them Italian title La terramadre (“Mother Earth”) by Nello La Marca (seen in the Berlinale Forum) and Bouli Lanners’ French/Belgian title Eldorado [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], winner of the Label Europa Cinemas in this year’s Directors’ Fortnight.

Also from Cannes, the festival will screen Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], as part of “Band à part,” a newly formed sidebar that also features a small tribute to France’s ACID (France’s Independent Film Distribution Association) with screenings of the documentaries No London Today by Delphine Deloget and Kommunalka by Françoise Huguier.

In homage to genre cinema, the festival’s traditional Special Event is this dedicated to horror master Dario Argento with an almost complete retrospective (including some of his television work) as well as a round table at which some of the director’s long-time collaborators will participate, including musician Claudio Simonetti and screenwriter Franco Ferrini.

(Translated from Italian)