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CINEMA JOVE 2021

Cinema Jove pays tribute to Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay

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- The Spanish gathering, which unspools from 18-26 June, is presenting the Luna de València Award to the director of We Need to Talk About Kevin

Cinema Jove pays tribute to Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay
Director Lynne Ramsay (© Giornate degli Autori)

“This prize couldn’t be more appropriate, bearing in mind the whole philosophy of this festival, because the films of Lynne Ramsay centre on children, teenagers and young people with problems that are out of the ordinary. Her way of dealing with her characters’ key conflicts has a lot to do with taking a sensorial approach, giving the image prominence over the dialogue,” pointed out the artistic director of Cinema Jove, Carlos Madrid, as he talked about the Luna de València Award that the Scottish director will receive at its 36th edition, set to unspool from 18-26 June. The gathering on the east coast of Spain will screen her entire filmography and will even unfold in the presence of the filmmaker, who will take part in a conversation with the press and the audience.

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Cinema Jove 2021’s Official Competitive Section for Features comprises ten titles. Belgium’s Anne Sirot and Raphaël Balboni, who were present here in 2019 with their short film With Thelma, are returning to Valencia with their feature debut, Madly in Life [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Raphaël Balboni & Ann Sirot
film profile
]
, a bittersweet tale about Alzheimer’s disease that reflects the difficulties it can pose for family life. Stop Zemlia [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kateryna Gornostai
film profile
]
, the first film by Ukraine’s Kateryna Gornostai, maps out the doubts, desires and close friendships of a group of students, while Kosovo’s Norika Sefa is taking part with Looking for Venera [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Norika Sefa
film profile
]
, a powerful drama that reflects on the double standards with which a woman’s sexual awakening is treated in the closed-minded surroundings of the Balkans. Meanwhile, Ferit Karahan sets his second film, Brother’s Keeper [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ferit Karahan
film profile
]
, in a boarding school in Eastern Anatolia, as he depicts the repression suffered by the Kurdish population.

The First Death of Joana [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Brazil’s Cristiane Oliveira broaches the very timely topic of sexuality and gender. Also hailing from Brazil is Ecstasy, in which Moara Passoni ponders her anorexia. In The Whaler Boy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Philipp Yuryev
film profile
]
, Russian first-time director Philipp Yuryev has crafted a reflection on the search for love, the transition to the adult world and the difficulties of coming of age emotionally in a fiction title set in a Siberian town specialising in whaling.

Also tackling an exodus, albeit in this case one from the city to the countryside, is All the Pretty Little Horses [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michalis Konstantatos
film profile
]
, a Greek family thriller by Michalis Konstantatos. The Penultimate [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jonas Kærup Hjort
film profile
]
, the feature debut by Denmark’s Jonas Kærup Hjort, is a satire about human existence in times of lockdown. And the Competitive Selection for Features is rounded off by Australia’s Friends and Strangers, in which James Vaughan offers his take on the Millennial generation.

Standing out in the special sessions is the second effort (following Asamblea [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
) by Álex Montoya, Lucas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Álex Montoya
film profile
]
, which recently scooped accolades in the Zonazine section of the Málaga Film Festival, with the Silver Biznaga for Best Spanish Film and that for Best Actor for its young lead, Jorge Motos. And then there’s Berlanga Desconocido, in which four unreleased short films by the Valencian filmmaker will get an airing, in celebration of the centenary of his birth.

Furthermore, Cinema Jove 2021 has programmed a selection of 56 shorts hailing from 25 countries, and also present and correct are its usual strand dedicated to novel and daring web series, the El joven Godard (lit. “Young Godard”) section, the – highly successful – sidebar called Los dioses del anime (lit. “The Gods of Anime”), plus another devoted to movies that take place in secondary schools. “They are places where teenagers learn, in terms of both academic content and life lessons that are not scribbled down in their notes,” sums up Carlos Madrid.

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(Translated from Spanish)

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