14/06/2005

The Midnight Sun Film Festival is celebrating its 20th birthday this year from June 15-19, with special guests and screenings lined-up by the festival’s artistic committee -including festival director Peter von Bagh, Aki and Mika Kaurismäki and Timo Malmi- to make the event a memorable experience under the magic 24h day light.

The festival will kick off tomorrow afternoon with the screening of My Lapland by Hanna Bergholm, a 30 minute short film/tribute to Lapland’s remote villages and ways of life, and the Finnish premiere of Garth Jennings’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Galaxy. The screwball sci-fi adventure film adapted from Douglas Adams’ classic book, is part of five non-Finnish films that will premiere at the festival including the French 5x2 [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by François Ozon.

The main guests/filmmakers of the festival’s 20th edition include the Belgian Dardennes Brothers who just won the Palme d’or in Cannes for The Child [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne
film profile], the British Roy Ward Baker who started as an assistant to Alfred Hitchkock, the Turkish Yesim Ustaoglu (Journey To The Sun), the German Hans Weingartner (The Edukators) and Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll from Uruguay (Whisky).
Two Finnish directors will be on hand for the premiere of their films: Petri Kotwica, an award-winning short film director who makes his feature film debut with Homesick produced by Making Movies Oy, and Mika Kaurismäki with Brasileirinho that already screened in Berlin last February.
They will be joined by three of their counterparts: Liisa Helminen (Pelicanman), Aku Louhimies (Frozen Land) and Aleksi Salmenperä (Producing Adults).

The festival’s section ‘New films from abroad’ will screen among others Arnaud Desplechin’s Rois et Reine [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Abdel Kechiche’s Césars winning film L'esquive [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Ousmane Sembene’s Moolaadé, and the ‘Special anniversary screenings’ will include three silent movies with live music, a ‘tent’ performance of Rocky Horror Picture Show, Robert Bresson’s L’argent as well as the 1950s Finnish comedy Rovaniemen markkinoilla. The tribute to Teuvo Tulio will –according to festival organisers- epitomise the Midnight Sun Film festival with a Friday night screening accompanied by a karaoke gala.