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FESTIVALS Belgium

Well-stocked line-up for 25th FIFA

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The 25th Mons International Love Film Festival (February 13-20) has unveiled its abundant line-up. This anniversary edition will give pride of place to European discoveries, offering Belgian audiences the chance to see recent films as yet unreleased in Belgium.

Of the 11 features in international competition, five are European. Viewers will have the opportunity to discover the latest work by the enfant terrible of Swiss film, Lionel Baier.

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His unusual film, Another Man [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lionel Baier
film profile
]
, was produced by Switzerland’s Saga Production, with backing from TSR but without funding from the Federal Office for Culture. Made on a budget of just over €200,000, the film centres on a young man who, despite himself, is catapulted into a career as a film critic.

Presented at the latest Locarno Film Festival, Another Man has been nominated for Best Film at the Swiss Film Awards, whose ceremony will be held on March 7.

Also set in the film world, Anna Negri’s Good Morning, Heartache is a mockumentary looking at the daily life of an apparently harmonious couple, an actor and a film editor. Selected at the Sundance Festival last January, the film features two rising stars of Italian cinema: Shooting Star Alba Rohrwacher (see interview) and Marco Foschi.

The FIFA programme also includes the debut feature by Romanian director Adrian Sitaru, who attracted attention last year with his short Waves, which picked up awards at Locarno and Namur. Unveiled in Venice Days and presented in competition at the latest Angers Film Festival, Hooked [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adrian Sitaru
film profile
]
symbolises the vitality of Eastern European film, in particular Romanian.

Also screening in competition are François Dupeyron’s With a Little Help From Myself [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, which was lauded by French critics; and Israeli director Amos Kollek’s European co-production Restless [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(co-produced by Belgium’s Entre Chien et Loup), which is having difficulty finding a Belgian distributor, despite its selection at last year’s Berlinale.

Besides the competition, FIFA will host several avant-premières, including Maïwenn’s The Actress’ Ball [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, the latest films by Jean-Claude Brisseau and Elie Chouraqui, and the new work by iconoclastic Belgian director Jan Bucquoy (L’Art du Couple).

Finally, 11 films will take part in a European competition whose prize is a television broadcast on RTBF.

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(Translated from French)

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