19/02/2008

Retrospectives on Spanish director Jose Luís Guerín and on Romania’s newest wave of directors will be part of the upcoming IndieLisboa, which opens April 24 with the screening of Wong Kar Wai's latest film, My Blueberry Nights [+see also:
trailer
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In the sidebar section Independent Hero, Hong-Kong-born director Johnnie To will share the limelight with Guerín, whose films are still unknown in Portugal. Since Los Motivos de Berta (1983), Guerín's films have moved between the territories of fiction and documentary, almost always indifferent to commercial pressures and with rigorous formal constructions.

The retrospective will include his two latest, correlated works: En la ciudad de Sylvia, presented in competition at the latest Venice Film Festival, and Unas fotos en la Ciudad de Sylvia.

Still partially unknown in Portugal, despite their growing international visibility over the last two years, the names of the Romanian retrospective include emerging talents such as Christian Mungiu, Cristi Puiu, Catalin Mitulescu and the recently deceased Christian Menescu. The festival will also offer audiences the possibility to rediscover important directors such as Hanno Hofer, Constantin Popescu, Tomas Ciulei and Alexandru Soloman.

Organisers promise a programme of approximately 250 titles for the 11-day festival and expect to beat the record 35,500 admissions reached in 2007.