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FESTIVALS Italy

It’s all go for Milano Film Festival, chaired by the new director Gabriele Salvatores

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- The 23rd edition kicks off tomorrow on Friday, 28 October with The World is Yours and Denmark. There will also be a tribute to Matteo Garrone and the Belgian animators Swaef and Roels

It’s all go for Milano Film Festival, chaired by the new director Gabriele Salvatores
The World Is Yours by Romain Gavras

The 23rd edition of Milano Film Festival is due to kick off on Friday, 28 September, chaired by the new artistic director Gabriele Salvatores in co-direction with Alessandro Beretta. The event’s first programmed evening at the Anteo Palazzo del Cinema will be hosting one of the most anticipated premieres in The Outsiders - Out of Competition section: The World is Yours [+see also:
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, a brilliant French gangster film directed by Romain Gavras, starring Vincent Cassel and Isabelle Adjani, presented at Cannes Directors' Fortnight 2018. Denmark [+see also:
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by Kasper Rune Larsen will also be screened on the same evening as part of the International Feature Films Competition – the competitive MFF section open to first and second films. The director of this debut will also be in attendance at the screening, following the film's international premiere in the Generation 14plus section at the Berlinale.

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The 23rd edition's programme – composed of two international competitions (eight feature films and 38 short films), three new sections (Ultra Reality, My Screen, Art Cinema), and various exhibitions (The Outsiders, Animation Focus, VideoEspanso, milano film festivalino) – flits from emerging directors to great directors, with a tribute to Matteo Garrone due to take place on Monday, 1 October at the Cineteca Spazio Oberdan.

Family seems to play an important role in all eight films in competition, from the extended family and community dimension of a kibbutz in The Dive [+see also:
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by Israeli director Yona Rozenkier, to an incredibly dysfunctional family in Thunder Road by American director Jim Cummings and the crisis of the family institution in Tropical Virus by Santiago Caicedo, based on the graphic novel by Paola Power. Reflections on identity also seem to stand out, both in terms of the individual (in the Danish film Denmark and Crystal Swan [+see also:
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interview: Darya Zhuk
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by the director Darya Zhuk, the first Belarusian film in the running for an Oscar) and in terms of the entire nation (The Mercy of the Jungle [+see also:
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interview: Joël Karekezi
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by the Ugandan director Joël Karekezi and The Third Wife by the Vietnamese director Ash Mayfair, winner of the NETPAC Prize for Best Asian film at Toronto Film Festival 2018), including in a film as different as Luz [+see also:
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by the German director Tilman Singer, an enigmatic demon-possessed horror film.

The out-of-competition section at Milano Film Festival will be hosting The Image Book [+see also:
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by Jean-Luc Godard in Italian premiere (Special Palme d'Or winner at Cannes) which will be presented by the producer Mitra Faharani, also a festival jury member. In contrast is Climax [+see also:
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interview: Souheila Yacoub
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by GasparNoé, awarded at the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes. U-July 22 [+see also:
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interview: Erik Poppe
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by Erik Poppe is a unique sequence shot film about a girl as she escapes a massacre at the hands of the right-wing extremist who left behind 69 victims in Norway in 2011. A play on paradox and kitsch aesthetics, Diamantino [+see also:
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interview: Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Sc…
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by Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt will also be screened, which follows the greatest Portuguese footballer of all time, a double of Cristiano Ronaldo, as he risks becoming a witness to nationalism, in spite of himself. The film is being distributed in Italy by I Wonder Pictures (in cinemas from 18 April 2019).

Fresh off the plane from Venice 75, in collaboration with BookCity Milano, is Non-Fiction [+see also:
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interview: Olivier Assayas
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by Olivier Assayas, a brilliant comedy starring Guillaume Canet and Juliette Binoche. The section will also be hosting the last-minute addition of Museo, the Mexican heist film that won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the last Berlinale, directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios and starring Gael Garcia Bernal.

Animation has once again confirmed its important role at the festival, with the first Animation Focus event due to take place on Monday, 1 October with the historic Animation Marathon, a night that offers an overview of animated short films alternating between stop-motion, drawn animation, puppetry and digital rendering, and between different genres, schools and styles over the course of three hours. Saturday, 6 October will see the festival celebrating the very original journey of two Belgian animators Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels, with the screening of the medium-length film The Magnificent Cake! (screened in competition at the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes), to be preceded by Oh Willy..., a short film made by the couple back in 2012. An unmissable opportunity for those wanting to find out more about two of the most original players on the European animation scene.

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(Translated from Italian)

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