07/04/2008

The European Film Festival of Lecce is growing. To be held from April 15-20, the ninth edition – and first to be supported by European Parliament, which has chosen to present the Lux Award – is offering 10 competition titles, as well as tributes (to Nikita Mikhalkov and Michele Placido, 12 films each), meetings and new sections.

Among the contenders for the Golden Olive, Fipresci and SNGCI award for Best Performance will also be Italian title L’estate d’inverno (“Winter’s Summer”), shot in HD by 21-year-old Davide Sibaldi and set in a motel in Copenaghen; as well as top festival films from last year, from I Am from Titov Veles [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Teona Strugar Mitevska
film profile] by Teona Strugar Mitevska to Pudor [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by David and Tristán Ulloa.

Three “new faces of Italian cinema” will each meet with audiences: Jasmine Trinca, who will accompany Nanni Moretti’s The Caiman [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jean Labadie
interview: Nanni Moretti
film profile]; Elena Bourika with Mimmo Calopresti’s L’abbuffata [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; and Golden Leopard winner Michele Venitucci for Off the Ropes by Fulvio Bernasconi.

Attention to young filmmakers is demonstrated by the screenings all the short films nominated for the latest edition of the European Film Awards; and by a tribute to the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, which – besides the restored print of Michelangelo Antonioni’s They Cry – will present several recent graduation films from its students (including Dora by Sergio Basso, seen in Locarno).

In a moment of an increase in Italian documentary filmmaking, Lecce is this year launching the Cinema & Realtà, which will also screen (alongside previously seen films such as Zero – Inchiesta sull’11 settembre and Suddenly, Last Winter) the premiere of Perotti Point, a collective film of the abbattimento of the ecological monster of Punta Perotti, coordinated by Alessandro Piva and Maurizio Sciarra.

(Translated from Italian)