19/08/2002 - A handful of Italian films join a hefty selection of the best new German and Russian titles at Felice Laudadio’s EuropaCinema 2002 in Viareggio from September 14-21

A handful of Italians will join the large German and Russian contingents at the 19th edition of EuropaCinema scheduled for September 14-21, presided over by Luciana Castellina and directed, after a five-year absence, by Felice Laudadio.
Four of the eleven films selected for competition this year are Russian and they include Alexei Balabanov’s War and Alexander Rogoghkin’s The Cuckoo. Viareggio is also dedicating an entire section to new German cinema with a selection that includes Sven Taddicken’s Mein Bruder Der Vampir -My Brother, the Vampire and Horst Sczerba’s Herz – Heart, both of which are in competition. EuropaCinema2002 intends celebrating the newfound energy of European film - as demonstrated by the recent German victory at this year’s Locarno film festival and a good number of Euro-titles both in and out of competition in Venice ’59.
Felice Laudadio lamented the drastic cut in Italian films taking part and resorted to colourful adjectives like “terrible” and “terrifying” to describe most of what was screened for him. “I’d loved to have had a special section for first and second Italian films but there weren’t any,” was the director’s laconic comment. “All of us would have loved to discover the new Pugni in tasca but clearly this is not a good time for Italian film.”
That said, competition includes Stefano Incerti’s latest film, La vita come viene as well as the Italian premiere of Franco Zeffirelli’s Callas Forever (as we write, the film has just been withdrawn from Venice in favour of a world premiere in Paris). Other Italian titles includes Damiano Damiani’s Assassini nei giorni di festa while one of the chosen artists in the New Faces section is Fabrizio Gifuni, the protagonist of Andrea Porporati’s Il sole negli occhi.
One of the main highlights of EuropaCinema2002 will surely be the Italian premiere of Luc Besson’s Le grand bleu. The film was made an incredible fourteen years ago but never released in Italy because of legal problems.