10/10/2013 - The largest film festival in town will start with Argentine writer-director Lucía Puenzo’s Wakolda, about one of the most hated men in history – the Nazis’ Angel of Death, Josef Mengele

Oslo’s Film from the South – the largest festival in the Norwegian capital, now in its 23th year – will open tonight (October 10) with Argentinian writer-director Lucía Puenzo’s Wakolda [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], about one of the most hated men in history – the Nazis’ Angel of Death, SS officer and Auschwitz physician Josef Mengele. After the war, Mengele fled to Argentina, to Bariloche, in the Río Negro province – “it is almost a paradox that Mengele, so obsessed with racial purity, should end up in a continent where we all have mixed blood,” said Puenzo, whose film - supported by Norwegian South Film Fund – was premiered in Un Certain Regard in Cannes.

During the festival, which ends on October 20 Wakolda will be followed by another 90 features from Asia, Africa and Latin America, including 19 in the international completion for the Silver Mirror (and €50,000); among the contenders are Asghar Fahradi’s mystery-drama The Past [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and Indian director Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox [+see also:
trailer
film profile], both screening at the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund.

Saudi director Haifaa al-Mansour will be in Oslo with the first feature ever shot in Saudi-Aabia, Wadjda [+see also:
trailer
film profile], about a 10-year-old girl who signs for her school’s Koran recitation competition to raise the remaining money she needs to buy a green bicycle – although women must neither ride bicycles, drive cars nor walk alone in the streets in the country (where there are no cinemas).

Other guests include Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose Uncle Boonmee: Who Can Recall His Past Lives [+see also:
trailer
film profile] won the Golden Palm in Cannes 2010; in Oslo he will introduce a retrospective of his features and shorts. French-Algerian director Nadir Moknèche will present his dark drama, Goodbye Morocco [+see also:
trailer
film profile], and Turkish director Yesim Ustaoglu another drama, Araf-Somewhere in Between [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Seven Japanese fully-animated films from Mangapolis, including last year’s Silver Mirror winner – Mamoru Hosoda’s Wolf Children - will be introduced by Norwegian manga (= comic books) expert Hans Ivar Stordahl. Mangapolis? It’s not on the map, but a digital village created by the festival for the loyal followers of Japanese popular culture; in Japan 1.1 billion manga books are sold annually.

A Chinese silent film from 1927, The Spider Cave (Pan si dong/photo), by Chinese director Dan Duyu – credited with his country’s first full-length feature, Yan Ruisheng (1921) – will have its Norwegian re-premiere. The Chinese Film Archive considered it a central work in Chinese film history, but lost, until a print was discovered in the Norwegian National Library’s collection in Mo i Rana.

Launched at Oslo’s Colosseum with a live orchestra as “the first Chinese film on show in Norway” in January 1929, a restored copy will screen during the festival introduced by film historian Chris Berry and archivist Tina Anckarman – and another will be returned to its home country.

During the Norwegian South Film Fund and the Norwegian Film Institute’s annual co-production market, 12 international film projects – selected from 143 submissions – will be pitched to Norwegian producers. If the matchmaking succeeds, coproductions of features and documentaries may apply for support from the €0.8 million state allocation for developing countries.