12/04/2011

Linz is hosting the 8th Crossing Europe Festival (April 12-17), which kicks off today. The week-long annual event, generously backed by the European Union’s MEDIA Programme, turns the city into "an Austrian living room for European cinema", with its line-up of 160 titles representing 35 countries.

The focus of the festival, headed by Christine Dollhofer, remains the international competition for debut and second features on contemporary subjects. This year, pride of place goes to Eastern European films, with Hungarian director Ágnes Kocsis’s Adrienn Pal [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Agnes Kocsis, director of P…
film profile], shown at last year’s Cannes Film Festival; Constantin Popescu’s Romanian film Principles of Life [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Constantin Popescu
film profile]; Nikola Ležaić’s Serbian title Tilva Ros [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; Dad [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Vlado Škafar
interview: Vlado Škafar
film profile] by Slovenia’s Vlado Škafar; and Czech director Václav Kadrnka’s Eighty Letters, which was selected at the latest Berlinale.

The four other films in competition are Pia Marais’s German production At Ellen‘s Age [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], starring Jeanne Balibar; Lluís Galter’s Spanish flick Caracremada [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (“Burnt Face”); Brit helmer Joanna Hogg’s Archipelago [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]; and Seren Yüce’s Turkish title Majority.

The Panorama Fiction section will show nine titles that have already won acclaim elsewhere, including the opening film Brownian Movement [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Dutch director Nanouk Leopold, who will also be the subject of a tribute, along with her producer Stienette Bosklopper. Also in the line-up are Hungarian auteur Kornél Mundruczó’s latest work, Tender Son - The Frankenstein Project [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]; Berlinale contender Our Grand Despair [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Turkey’s Seyfi Teoman; Copacabana [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by France’s Marc Fitoussi; and White White World [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Serbia’s Oleg Novković. Ten documentaries complete the Panorama programme.

Among other special events and meetings, Crossing Europe will host the "Working Worlds" section, a selection of documentaries about the world of work in the era of globalisation; the "City – Migration – Identity" sidebar; the "Night Sight" section focusing on European genre films (including Lorraine-born director Franck Richard’s The Pack and Spanish helmer Miguel Ángel Vivas’s Kidnapped); and a line-up dedicated to “westerns” from Communist countries.

(Translated from French)