FIFF turns 25
Twenty-five years is worth celebrating! The International Francophone Film Festival, set up in Namur in 1986, is getting ready to mark its 25th anniversary.
While the festival has built itself on solid foundations that cleverly combine limited-audience films from all four corners of the world, and safe bets by big-name directors who have brought and still bring international success to Francophone cinema, it’s now time to look to the future.
Rather than looking back, the festival has chosen to look ahead. Twenty young actors will meet five prestigious mentors, and international casting directors. Likewise, the feature and short film competition juries will comprise young writers, directors, producers and actors whose debut works were shown at the festival. The features jury will be headed by Belgian director Joachim Lafosse, the shorts jury by whimsical and animated duo Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier.
The FIFF line-up will include no fewer than 24 Belgian avant-premieres: from prestigious, highly-anticipated French titles Little White Lies [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Guillaume Canet and No & Mo by Zabou Breitman, in world avant-premiere, to Xavier Dolan’s Cannes sensation Heartbeats, young Romanian cinema with Radu Muntean’s Tuesday, After Christmas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Radu Muntean
film profile] and some Belgian previews.
Among the latter is Sam Garbarski’s intriguing Distant Neighbourhood, adapted from Jirō Taniguchi’s cult manga book. The film is a reinterpretation, set in 1960s France, of the timeless story of a father who is catapulted back to his youth and finds himself a prisoner of his past.
Also in the programme is Benjamin Viré’s rather gory genre film Cannibal (produced by Plot Point Prod), and Olias Barco’s offbeat Kill Me Please (La Parti), which looks at a new type of clinic offering medically-assisted suicide and stars Aurélien Recoing, Benoit Poelvoorde, Bouli Lanners and Virginie Efira.
The festival has not forgotten its Flemish neighbours, for it will unveil in avant-premiere Dingue de Twa, the latest film by Jan Verheyen (The Alzheimer Case [+see also:
trailer
film profile], The K File [+see also:
trailer
film profile]). The event will run in Namur from October 1-8.
(Translated from French)
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