03/11/2010

After a few barren years and the loss of the Camerimage Festival (to be held for the first time this year in Bydgoszcz), the city of Lodz, birthplace of Poland’s greatest cinematic traditions, is once again hosting the important film event Cinergia European Cinema Forum, whose 15th edition opens tomorrow.

One of the aims of Cinergia’s organisers is to change audiences’ perception of world cinema and European cinema in particular. The event, which will open with Norwegian director Bent Hamer’s Home for Christmas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bent Hamer
film profile], therefore has a rich line-up with over 160 films programmed over nine days, including more than 40 titles unreleased in Poland.

The new addition at this 15th edition is an international competition of debut and second features. Fourteen directors will vie for the "Cristal Boat", to be awarded by a jury headed by Hungarian director Márta Mészáros.

Among the features in competition are Urszula Antoniak’s Nothing Personal [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Urszula Antoniak
interview: Urszula Antoniak
film profile] (six awards at Locarno and Best Dutch Film 2009); The Invisible Woman by France’s Agathe Teyssier; Javier Ruiz Caldera’s Spanish Movie [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; Yatzy [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Norway’s Katja Eyde Jacobsen; Team Building by Hungary’s Reka Almasi; and The Christening [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marcin Wrona
film profile] by Poland’s Marcin Wrona.

The festival’s extensive guest list includes Otar Iosseliani, Jaco Van Dormael and Tinto Brass, who will be the focus of retrospectives. There will also be special sections devoted to Norwegian, Belgian, Czech, Slovakian and Hungarian films, a close-up on European co-productions, a queer cinema programme and a Focus on Japanese cinema.

(Translated from French)