28/09/2011

Opening tomorrow, the 19th Hamburg Film Festival (September 29-October 8) is set to unveil nearly 150 titles from all countries in all genres, "touching films about music, alarming films about the environment, exciting thrillers and romantic love stories", according to festival director Albert Wiederspiel.

There is nonetheless a strong emphasis on political films about power and its structures. For example, the Francophone section Voilà! will unspool The Minister [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pierre Schoeller
film profile] by Pierre Schoeller (whose highly-acclaimed debut feature, Versailles [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Geraldine Michelot
interview: Pierre Schoeller
film profile], was presented at Hamburg in 2008), which chronicles the life of a transport minister and its mysteries. The latter film enthused Cannes audiences more than Xavier Durringer’s The Conquest [+see also:
trailer
film profile], about Nicolas Sarkozy’s rise to power, which is also screening in this section, alongside Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi’s Chicken With Plums [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Belgian helmer Nicolas Provost’s The Invader [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
film profile].

The festival’s focus on French cinema is even stronger this year for an entire section is devoted to films about Paris, from Hôtel du Nord to Christophe Honoré’s Love Songs [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile].

The big international section Agenda 11 includes 39 films representing 30 countries, including Andreas Dresen’s soberly moving Stopped On Track [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the latest Cannes Film Festival (see Stopped On Track by the cruelty of deathreview). The feature will be shown in national avant-premiere. The director and his long-standing producer Peter Rommel will also receive (on October 1) the prestigious Douglas Sirk Prize for their outstanding contribution to cinema. This is the first time that Hamburg has awarded the prize to a German winner, and what’s more a duo.

While the Northern Lights section continues to present titles made in Hamburg and northern Germany, this edition is devoting a special sidebar to Icelandic cinema, Iceland Deluxe. The nine titles selected in this section represent the best of Icelandic production from the 1980s and 1990s.

Vitrina focuses on Spanish and Portuguese-language films, with an emphasis on Latin American cinema.

To coincide with the European Green Capital Award 2011 won by the city, the Three Colours: Green programme, which was created last year and was very well received, will present nine documentaries from all over the world on the subject of the environment.

The audience will get the chance to pick its favourite from among the seven big European hits screening in Eurovisuell, including Marius Holst’s Norwegian title King of Devil's Island [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and All For One [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a Danish Ocean's Eleven comedy by Rasmus Heide.