27/03/2013 - The fourteenth edition of the European cinema festival will take place on April 8-13. Tributes will be given to Emidio Greco, Fernando Di Leo and to record holder Pietro Mennea

Centre stage will be given to Aki Kaurismaki and Francesca Neri during the fourteenth edition of the Festival del cinema europeo, the European cinema festival, which will taking place in Lecce on April 8-13. The Finnish director and the Italian actress will be respectively handed the European and Italian cinema sections, with retrospectives, photo exhibitions and meetings with the public.

The event, directed by Alberto La Monica and Cristina Soldano, will pay homage to director Emidio Greco with the creation of an award dedicated to him, reserved for shorts, as well as to Fernando Di Leo one of the great Italian genre masters and to record holder Pietro Mennea, with the premiere presentation of Sergio Basso’s documentary dedicated to him, Diciannove e settantadue.

The European feature film competition will be composed of ten films in their Italian premiere, among which Greek 11 Meetings With My Father by Nikos Cornilios, Polish Loving [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Slawomir Fabicki, German Our Little Differences [+see also:
trailer
interview: Sylvie Michel
film profile] by Sylvie Michel, Spanish Dream and Silence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jaime Rosales
film profile] by Jaime Rosales and French Three Worlds [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Arta Dobroshi
film profile] by Catherine Corsini. In the running for the Mario Verdone prize, for Italian debut and second films, will be Cosimo e Nicole [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Francesco Amato, Alì Has Blue Eyes [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Claudio Giovannesi
film profile] by Claudio Giovannesi and Come non detto by Ivan Silvestrini.

Among the premieres and the special out of competition features will be dark comedy Il pasticciere [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Luigi Sardiello
film profile] by Luigi Sardiello, with Antonio Catania playing a diabetic pastry maker with a childhood trauma, Il cuore in mano, i piedi sulla strada by Uli Moller and mockumentary Vive le rock by Alessandro Valenti.

Among other initiatives, the presentation of the 2012 Lux Prize from the European Parliament will be given to Shun Li and the Poet [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Andrea Segre
interview: Andrea Segre
film profile] by Andrea Segre, and a roundtable called Creatività e redditività del cinema europeo (European cinema creativity and revenue generation), in which Doris Pack (president of the European parliament’s culture commission), Silvia Costa (MEP who oversees the Creative Europe programme) and Christian Juhl Lemche (president European Film Promotion) will participate.

(Translated from Italian)