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FESTIVALS Belgium

Mediterranean journeys

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The 11th Mediterranean Film Festival will run from November 5-13 in Brussels.

This biennial, week-long event is an opportunity to take a stroll along the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. Almost 20 countries will be represented, with a special focus on Turkey, a country with many nationals living in Brussels.

In competition, ten features will be judged by an eclectic jury headed by actor Claude Brasseur, and comprising Arta Dobroshi, Nabil Ben Yadir, Samir Guesmi and Jose-Luis Penafuerte. The competition will offer a rapid journey along the Big Blue, with European titles Plato’s Academy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Constantin Moriatis
interview: Filippos Tsitos
interview: Filippos Tsitos
film profile
]
by Greek director Filippos Tsitos (LUX Prize competition 2010 of the European Parliament, see video interview); The Good News by Helena Taberna (Spain); Dunia Ayaso and Félix Sabroso’s The Island Inside (Spain); Branko Schmidt’s Metastases (Croatia); and Paolo Virzi’s The First Beautiful Thing [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(Italy).

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The Panorama section will take a retrospective look at Mediterranean production from the last two years. These films, which were exhibited on limited print-runs in Belgium or not at all, nonetheless show the vitality of Mediterranean cinema in all its forms. This is an opportunity to (re)discover Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Yorgos Lanthimos
film profile
]
(Greece), which won the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes in 2009 and was never released in Belgium; and Alvaro Pastor and Antonio Naharro’s Me Too [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(Spain), which scooped the Golden Iris at the Brussels European Film Festival and had a (very) low-key release at the end of August.

The Medoc section offers a rich selection of documentaries giving a glimpse of the state of the world, from an in-depth exploration of the history of world cinema with Philippe Baron’s First Passion (France) to Laura Halilovic’s Me, My Gypsy Family and Woody Allen (Italy), an early response to the current stigmatisation of the Roma community.

The Mediterranean Film Festival, held every two years, promises as always to be a culturally mixed and spicy cinematic feast under the glass roof of Le Botanique.

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(Translated from French)

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