European Cinema in Warsaw, Gdansk and Lodz

by Fabien Lemercier

26/04/2005 - Delayed from autumn to spring, the 10th European Film Festival finishes today in Gdansk, where it has been running since last Thursday. For the first time, the festival, whose target audience is youth, choose to hold screenings from the Old Continent in three Polish towns, beginning with Warsaw from the 15th to the 20th April, followed by Gdansk from the 19th to the 24th. In total, 40 films were shown, among them Polish premières for 17 European features, notably in the section entitled Panorama of European Cinema, made up of 13 of the best films of recent years and 4 Polish productions. Pregi (Les Raies) by Magdalena Piekorz, the best film of the year Wesele (The Wedding) by Wojciech Smarzowski My Summer of Love by Pawel Pawlikowski and Tulipany by Jacek Borcuch.

The selected European films, chosen for their quality rather than country of origin, offered a top quality range, with France firmly in the spotlight with Comme une image [trailer] by Agnes Jaoui, Exiles by Tony Gatlif 5x2 [trailer] by Frangois Ozon and Woman of Honour by Claude Chabrol. Equally honoured was the United Kingdom with Vera Drake [trailer] by Mike Leigh, Girl With A Pearl Earing [trailer] by Peter Webber, Code 46 [trailer] by Michael Winterbottom and The Mother by Roger Michell. Alejandro Amenabar ( The Sea Inside [trailer]), Pedro Almodsvar (A Bad Education [trailer]) and Gracia Querejeta (Hector) offered a view of Spanish cinema while Italy offered two of its jewels The Consequences of Love by Paolo Sorrentino and I am not afraid [trailer] by Gabriele Salvatores. As for Germany, they travelled to Poland with Head on [trailer] by Fatih Akin, The Fall [trailer, film focus] by Olivier Hirschbiegel and King of Thieves by Ivan Fila coproduced with the Czech republic, Slovakia, France and Austria. But Greece wasn t overlooked with The Only Journey of His Life by Lakis Papastathis, nor were Hungary with Kontroll [trailer] by Nimrsd Antal and Croatia with A Wonderful Night in Split by Arsen Anton Ostojic. Finally, the Scandinavian countries also took part with Popular Music from Vittula by Reza Bagher (Sweden-Finland) and The Beautiful Country by Hans Peter Moland (Norway).

(Translated from French)