19/10/2005

The Münster Film Festival, which has taken place every second year since 1981, starts today and runs till the 23rd. Barbara Fischer-Rittmeyer, the chief organiser, and her team selected 30 features and 100 short films which will be screened in two competitions and three special sidebars.

This year's novelty is the European competition; the eight selected movies, presented by their directors, all deal with growing up in a Europe that is growing and changing, too. The European jury, including Inger Nilsson (Pippi Langstrumpf), will discover, among other films, the Swedish production Populärmusik fran Vittula (Popular Music From Vittula) by Reza Bagher, which will open the festival on a rebel rock n' roll beat, A Way of Life [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the internationally acclaimed debut of British director Amma Asante, as well as The Kiss by Hilde van Mieghem (Belgium). The best director will receive 10,000 euros.

For its eleventh edition, the short film competition, open to all films in German, focusing again on experimental works. Amongst the 68 selected shorts (on 520), it is worth mentioning Ausreisser, by Ulrike Grote, who won a Student Oscar for this moving story about a little boy who chooses himself a dad. Stephan Flint Müller, one of last year's favourites, will bring Bow Tie Duty for Squareheads, an animation film screened in Annecy, while Steffen Groth (actor in the big hit Go for Zucker! [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) is presenting Traumschatten, starring Bernadette Herwagen and David Bennent.

The festival dedicates a sidebar to Dutch cinema (screening, notably, Simon by Eddy Terstall, former candidate at the Oscars) including a Theo van Gogh retrospective (he was present in Münster in 2003). Münster also features a 'Film and Religion' section —in which Almodovar's High Heels, Artemisia by Agnès Merlet, Dancer in the Dark by Lars von Trier and Schatten im Paradies by Aki Kaurismäki will be discussed— and a local films section.

(Translated from French)