FESTIVALS Portugal
Fantasporto prepares its 32nd edition
by Vitor Pinto
31/01/2012 - The 32nd edition of Fantasporto will officially open on February 24 with the screening of Brit director Steve MacQueen’s second feature Shame [trailer], and will close on March 4 with Italian helmer Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be The Place [trailer, film focus].
Fantasporto has a great reputation among Portugal’s showcases for film. Over the years, the event broadened its programme beyond the fantasy genre, which it offered exclusively for several editions, and now, in 2012, it has programmed a total of 15 features in competition for the festival’s grand prize, which last year went to Dutch director Elbert Van Strien’s Two Staring Eyes.
Ten of these 15 films in competition are European (co-)productions. Standing out among them are Spanish titles Eva [trailer] by Kike Maíllo (which opened the latest Sitges Film Festival and is nominated for 12 Goya awards) and Game of Werewolves by Juan Martinez Moreno; Belgian flicks Madonna’s Pig by Frank van Passel, and Code 37: The Movie by Jakob Verbruggen; and Brit films Attack the Block [trailer] by Joe Cornish and The Holding [trailer], by Susan Jacobson.
In the parallel section, Directors’ Week, besides Shame, there is another film with sex as its central theme: The Slut [trailer], directed by and starring Israel’s Hagar Ben Asher (discovered in Critics’ Week at the latest Cannes Film Festival). Portuguese audiences will also get the chance to enjoy Almanya: Welcome to Germany [trailer] by Germany’s Yasemin Samdereli, and Avé [trailer, film focus] by Bulgaria’s Konstantin Bojanov (Cineuropa Award at the latest Sarajevo Film Festival), while Portuguese director Artur Serra Araújo will present the world premiere of his film A Moral Conjugal. Serra Araujo, who previously picked up an award at Fantasporto in 2007 with Suicide Ordered, returns this time with a film starring José Wallenstein, Maria João Bastos, São José Correia and Catarina Wallenstein.
A Moral Conjugal is, however, screening out of the Portuguese cinema competition, which includes a total of 13 shorts and medium-length films. Among them are the documentaries Matriz, by biologist and director Rui Oliveira and O Planalto da Mourela by Martin Dale.
(Translated from Spanish)
