20/01/2006

With the screening of his film Gravehopping (Odgrobadogroba), a Slovenian/Croatian co-production by this year’s "discovery", Ljubljana-born director Jan Cvitkovič last night opened the 17th edition of the Trieste Film Festival, which runs through January 26. The event has become known as the most abundant and thorough Italian festival specifically dedicated to the cinema of Central and Eastern Europe, and beyond.

Highly awaited is the Italian premiere of the latest film by Márta Mészáros, The Unburied Dead (A temetetlen halott, Hungary/Poland/Slovakia, 2004), on the life and assassination of Prime Minister Imre Nagy. Mészáros, Hungary’s most renowned director, will attend the festival.

There are eleven features in competition this year, an invaluable cross-section of Eastern Europe’s best films from 2005: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Cristi Puiu, winner of last year’s Un Certain Regard at Cannes; the first independent Kosovo production, Kukumi, by director Isa Qosja, who won the Special Jury Prize at the last Sarajevo Film Festival; Paths of Light (A fény ösvényei), the debut film by Hungarian Attila Mispál, winner of Best First Film at the 2005 Hungarian Film Week in Budapest; Labour Equals Freedom (Delo osvobaja) by Slovenian Damjan Kozole; Lady Zee (Leidi Zi) by Bulgarian director Georgi Djulgerov, Best Film at the last Sarajevo Film Festival; Lost and found. Six Glances of a Generation, a project that brought together six promising directors from Eastern Europe (Stefan Arsenijević, Nadeja Koseva, Mait Laas, Kornél Mundruczó, Christian Mungiu and Jasmila Žbanić) to make four short fiction films and a documentary, which then became a single feature; The Master (Mistrz) by Piotr Trzaskalski; Swiss/Rumanian co-production Ryna by Ruxanda Zenide, winner of the Special Jury Prize at the last Cottbus Festival; Sleeper (Schläfer), the debut feature by Benjamin Heisenberg, also at last year’s Cannes Festival; the latest effort by Slovakian director Martin Šulík, The City of the Sun Or Working Class Heroes (Sluneční Stàt aneb hrdinové dělnické třídy); and Something Like Happiness (Stesti) by Czech director Bohdan Sláma, a winner at last autumn’s San Sebastian Film Festival and the Czech candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film nomination. The jury is made up of Andrea Fornari (Italy), Judit Pintér (Hungary) and Jelka Stergel (Slovenia).

The Special Events also include the film Solidarność, Solidarność… (Poland, 2005) by the country’s leading directors (including Krzysztof Zanussi, Juliusz Machulski, Andrzej Jakimowski), made on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the birth of the eponymous union. Lastly, the closing night event will be the Italian premiere of Fateless [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Germany/UK/Hungary, 2005), the debut film by renowned international DoP Lajos Koltai (The film will be released in Italy on January 27).

(Translated from Italian)