The best of Central Eastern European cinema is making its return in digital form, on account of the ongoing health crisis, by way of the 32nd Trieste Film Festival which will run 21 – 30 January. The 50+ titles selected for the event directed by Fabrizio Grosoli and Nicoletta Romeo will be available to view on the MyMovies platform. This particular edition of the festival was supposed to revolve around the thirty-year anniversary of the Balkan Wars (1991/2021), “a project we’d been working on for years”, the artistic directors explain. But the pandemic has forced the festival to postpone this focus, “because many of the films we would have wanted to screen only exist in 35mm copies, which are impossible to screen in online festivals. Consequently, the tribute has been postponed (only to the spring, we hope), but we nonetheless felt it right to include two symbolic moments in such an important anniversary edition.” Indeed, it will be the film Underground which opens this year’s festival, an anarchic and surreal tale on the dissolution of Yugoslavia by Emir Kusturica, who won Cannes’ Palme d’Or in 1995, while another great work is scheduled to close the event: Ulysses’ Gaze by Theo Angelopoulos, who won the Grand Prize during that same year at Cannes.

(El artículo continúa más abajo - Inf. publicitaria)

The core of the festival programme is composed of three international competitions dedicated to features films, shorts and documentaries. Thirteen titles will grace the Feature Film Competition (whose jury is composed of director Adina Pintilie, producer Ewa Puszczyńska and programmer-film critic Paolo Bertolin), including two stories on the topic of paternity in the form of Serbian work Father [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Srdan Golubović
ficha de la película] by Srdan Golubović (which scooped the Audience Award in the most recent Berlinale’s Panorama line-up) and Andromeda Galaxy [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: More Raça
ficha de la película] by More Raça, set in Kosovo. Formerly screened in Sundance, Visar Morina’s Exile [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Visar Morina
ficha de la película] also moves between Kosovo and Germany, while Piotr Domalewski’s I Never Cry [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Piotr Domalewski
ficha de la película] unfolds between Poland and Ireland and shines a realistic light on the difficulties faced by families separated by emigration.

Likewise examining the theme of immigration is Bulgarian film Fear [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Ivaylo Hristov
ficha de la película] by Ivaylo Hristov, a drama which morphs into a comedy about a woman who is prepared to do battle with her entire village in order to welcome a migrant into her home. From modern-day Europe we move to that of the immediate post-war period in Andrej Smirnov’s A Frenchman, which explores Moscow in 1957, as seen through the eyes of a French student, and in Šarūnas Bartas’s In the Dusk [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Sharunas Bartas
ficha de la película], which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival and presented in a world premiere in San Sebastian. Arriving from Greece we find Pari [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Siamak Etemadi
ficha de la película] by Siamak Etemadi, which sees an Iranian mother combing the streets of Athens in search of her student son, while Romania offers up the satirical comedy The Campaign [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Marian Crişan
ficha de la película] by Marian Crișan, in which a politician chases votes to obtain a seat in Strasbourg. Serbian film My Morning Laughter [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] by Marko Đorđević tells of a thirty-year-old’s much belated coming of age, while two of the most surprising works from last year also feature on the agenda: Polish title Sweat [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Magnus von Horn
ficha de la película] by Magnus von Horn, which was also selected for Cannes and follows three days in the life of a “fitness-influencer”, and Georgian work Beginning [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Dea Kulumbegashvili
ficha de la película] by Dea Kulumbegashvili, which was selected for Cannes and triumphed in San Sebastian, telling the tale of female Jehovah’s Witness Yana who is attacked by an extremist group. Last but not least in this showcase, we find Faruk Lončarević’s film So She Doesn't Live [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la película], which shines a light on the most heinous case of homicide in post-war Bosnia, not to mention a Special Screening, out of competition, for Azerbaijani film In Between Dying [+lee también:
tráiler
ficha de la película] by Hilal Baydarov, whose name also appears in the documentary competition line-up alongside Nails in My Brain.

Ten titles will battle it out in the Documentary Competition: Acasă, My Home [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Radu Ciorniciuc
ficha de la película] by Romania’s Radu Ciorniciuc, which was honoured in Sundance; Armenian film  Blockade by Hakob Melkonyan; two titles from Croatia: Landscape Zero [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] by Bruno Pavić and Once Upon a Youth [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] by Ivan Ramljak; from Russia Town of Glory [+lee también:
tráiler
ficha de la película] by Dmitrij Bogolyubov; German offering Garage People [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] by Natal’ja Jefimkina; from Austria Please Hold the Line [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] by Pavel Cuzuioc; Romania’s Holy Father [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la película] by Andrei Dăscălescu; Lithuania’s Gentle Warriors [+lee también:
tráiler
ficha de la película] by Marija Stonytė, and the afore-mentioned Nails in My Brain.

Two new sections will bolster the festival’s traditional array of competitions: Off the Beaten…Screens, which is dedicated to new cinematographic forms, and Wild Roses: Directors in Europe, while five directors are set to “attend” the event (and take part in a panel discussion), albeit online, namely Hanna Polak with Something Better To Come [+lee también:
tráiler
ficha de la película], Agnieszka Smoczyńska with The Lure [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Agnieszka Smoczyńska
ficha de la película], Anna Zamecka with Communion [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película], Anna Jadowska with Wild Roses [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Anna Jadowska
ficha de la película] and Jagoda Szelc with Tower. A Bright Day [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Jagoda Szelc
ficha de la película].