11/03/2008

Opened last Friday by Lydia Carras’ biographical documentary My Life and Times, on celebrated Greek filmmaker Michael Cacoyannis, the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival – Images of the 21st Century celebrates its tenth anniversary with an impressive calendar of screenings.

There are an overall 15 sections, including the retrospectives. Through its 18 selected films, Views of the World, which accepts all formats and running times (features and shorts, film and digital), offers a panorama of the best of worldwide production. There are many European titles in the section, often on Europeans abroad, such as Anna Kesisoglou’s Greek film On the East Side of My Dream (the story of one couple’s trip to India) and Italy’s ABC Colombia by Enrica Colusso.

Human rights, the environment and memoir are just some of the subjects tackled by other showcases at the festival, which reaffirms its non-competitive nature and strengthens its collaboration with Amnesty International and the WWF. The two organisations are respectively behind the sections Human Rights (which includes Don’t Get Me Wrong by Adina Pintilie) and Habitat (which features the Australian/Italian co-production Gibellina by Joerg Burger).

A versatile artist active in documentaries as much as in narrative and animated films, Finnish director Arto Halonen is the subject of one of this year’s most highly anticipated tributes, along with those dedicated to Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky of the US and Greece’s Sotiris Danezis. All the filmmakers will teach a masterclass and workshop for festival audiences.

Also scheduled are the Pitching Forum, organised by the European Documentary Network with support from the EU’s MEDIA Programme, and the Doc Market. The latter was founded alongside the festival and has over the years grown to become a not-to-be-missed rendezvous for industry professionals, especially all those documentary filmmakers looking to make, sell or promote their projects.

(Translated from Italian)