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FESTIVALS Serbia

The dizzy heights of cinema: Kustendorf turns 11

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- Paolo Sorrentino and Ruben Östlund are two of the masters of cinema invited this year by Emir Kusturica to his village to teach classes, in amongst screenings and concerts

The dizzy heights of cinema: Kustendorf turns 11
(© Kustendorf Film and Music Festival)

A helicopter touches down just behind Emir Kusturica’s house to deliver Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes and nominated for the Golden Globes for the terrific The Square [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ruben Östlund
film profile
]
 (which puts him in a strong position for the Oscar nominations, after he missed out by a hair’s breadth with Force Majeure [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ruben Östlund
film profile
]
), to the premises of the Kustendorf International Film and Music Festival. Not far from the border with Bosnia-Herzegovina, the delightful traditional mountain village of Mecavnik, a one-of-a-kind hamlet built from scratch for the shoot for Life Is a Miracle (2004), is once again playing host to the gathering (16-21 January), as it has done annually for the last 11 years. Ahead of the opening ceremony, the very same helipad will see the return of another brilliant director, Paolo Sorrentino, who is already familiar with the inner workings of the event, as he presented The Great Beauty [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paolo Sorrentino
film profile
]
 here in 2014, just before the movie scooped the Oscar for Best Foreign-language Film.

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Amidst the snow-capped chalets, the Serbian filmmaker has gathered together myriad masters of cinema (and of music – we should highlight the presence this year of guitarist Gary Lucas, who has teamed up with artists ranging from Ginsberg to Lou Reed and Nick Cave, via Jeff Buckley, for whom he composed "Grace"), so that they can lead classes, in a spirit of passing on their knowledge (read our interview with Kusturica, published last year). Indeed, besides offering screenings, a competition for students’ short films and concerts, Kustendorf’s defining feature is that it hinges on daily film lessons, which this year will be taught, in consecutive order, by Östlund, Sorrentino, Rosa Attab (the producer of Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2016, and the recent You Were Never Really Here [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Lynne Ramsay
film profile
]
 by Lynne Ramsay, winner of Best Screenplay and Best Actor the following year), Vlastimir SudarPaolo VillalunaStephan Komandarev (Directions [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Stephan Komandarev
film profile
]
) and Qiang Wang

As for the programme of screenings, besides the latest films by the aforementioned distinguished guests, brought together under the Contemporary Trends umbrella, and the short films in competition, audiences will be able to peruse the filmographies of Paolo Sorrentino and Serbian actor Aleksandar Bercek by means of retrospectives. It is worth noting that on Sunday 21 January, before the final master class and the closing ceremony, the bonus film set to be screened in the Stanley Kubrick cinema in Kustendorf’s main square, not far from Bruce Lee, Jean Vigo and Che Guevara Streets, will be the documentary Ni dieu ni maître, une histoire de l'anarchisme by France’s Tancrède Ramonet.

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(Translated from French)

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