03/03/2011

Film festivals have a rocky history in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

The hugely popular fantastic film festival Cinénygma, organised each year around Halloween, had to end its successful run in 2006 because of funding problems. The next year, a new festival, DirActor’s Cut, later shortened to DirActors, was born, which took up more or less the same slot on the calendar and focused on actor-directors.

But the festival, organised by the City of Luxembourg without the support of the Luxembourg Film Fund, which had always backed Cynéngyma, never truly clicked with local audiences, despite some high-profile guests, mostly from neighbouring France, where many actors eventually venture into directing as well.

DirActors has now also died a sudden death after only a few editions, making room for yet another new festival, Discovery Zone.

This event, which will take place for the first time April 28-May 5, rather than the traditional October slot, is backed by both the City of Luxembourg and the Film Fund.

Organisers have announced they want the festival to be an audience-friendly event that showcases local film productions (in a section awkwardly branded as “Home Discovery”) as well as important fiction features that haven’t yet being shown commercially in the Grand Duchy (“Discover: Selected”), documentaries (“Discover: Hot Docs”) and a selection of films for younger audiences (“Discover: 6/18”).

The festival also has the backing of the Ministry of Culture; main multiplex operator Utopia Group; the Cinémathèque of the City of Luxembourg; the CNA, the National Audiovisual Centre; and the professional associations of screenwriters and directors, LARS; film technicians, ALTA; the union of film producers, ULPA; and the young filmmaker collective Filmreakter.