Forced to changed plans at the last minute - with solidarity and support from Pathé in particular - after torrential rain put the event’s usual home, the Corum, partly out of action, the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival will open its 48th edition (running from 16-24 October) tomorrow with a screening of Italian director Nanni Moretti’s Venetian competitor It Will Happen Tonight. It’s a high-end beginning for this year’s gathering which reported record attendance at its last edition, in the form of 65,000 admissions, and which will boast an expansive selection of 239 films (116 features and 123 shorts) hailing from all regions of the Mediterranean Basin.

(El artículo continúa más abajo - Inf. publicitaria)

The line-up notably includes a tribute to Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger, who’ll be delivering a master class on 19 October, a focus session on 13 films and one series (Portobello) dedicated to the Italian master Marco Bellochio, who’ll be meeting with the general public on 23 October, a 14-film retrospective on fellow Spaniard Vittorio De Sica, a deep dive into Arabian fantasy films and a zoom on new Egyptian cinema. The guest of honour at this year’s Cinemed will be French actress Camelia Jordana (who’ll be meeting audiences on 18 October and who has eight of her films in the showcase), with the event set to be closed by Nicole Garcia’s Milo (recently acclaimed in competition in San Sebastián).

Nine fiction feature films will battle it out for the 2026 Golden Antigone, which will be awarded by a jury led by Thierry Klifa. Stealing focus among them are Shame and Money by Kosovar Visar Morina (the winner of Sundance’s Grand Prize), Dua by fellow Kosovar Blerta Basholli (awarded the SACD Prize in Cannes’ Critics’ Week and her country’s candidate for the upcoming Best International Film Oscar), Armony by Italy’s Dario Albertini (unveiled on Locarno’s Piazza Grande), Des femmes comme les autres by French director Dominique Cabrera (read our news) and Chronicles from the Siege by Palestine-Syrian helmer Abdallah Al-Khatib (crowned Best First Film in Berlin).

Joining them in competition are four titles unveiled in the Venice Spotlight section: I Matter by Romania’s Alina Serban (the Venetian section’s Audience Award winner), Guria by Georgia’s Levan Koguashvili (his country’s Oscar candidate), Furies by Lebanon’s Rami Kodeih and Conversation with the Sea by fellow Lebanese director Muayad Alayan.

The 11 feature films selected for the Panorama section are likewise in the running for the Audience Award, namely The Daughters of Abraham by France’s Hanaël El Yousfi (triumphant in Angoulême and screened in Toronto), Rewind Barcelona by another French director, Paul Nouhet (unveiled in Cannes’ ACID section), North to Paradise by Spain’s Dani Sancho (the recent recipient of the Audience Award in Saint-Jean-de-Luz), Los justos by fellow Spaniards Jorge A. Lara and Fer Pérez, Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep by the Palestinian based in Brussels Rakan Mayasi (discovered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard line-up), The Arab by Algeria’s  Malek Bensmaïl (unveiled in Rotterdam’s Big Screen section), In This Darkness I See You by Lebanon’s Nadim Tabet, Complaint n° 713317 by Egyptian Yasser Shafiey and Safe Exit by fellow Egyptian Mohammed Hammad. That’s without forgetting the documentaries The Other Side of the Sun by Belgian-Syrian director Tawfik Sabouni (screened in the Berlinale’s Panorama line-up) and The Price of the Sun by Belgium’s Jérôme le Maire (which competed in Visions du Réel).

The Documentary Competition will thrust eight titles into the arena: To Hold a Mountain by Serbia’s Biljana Tutorov and Montenegro’s Petar Glomazic (awarded the Grand Jury Prize in Sundance), The Feast of the Wolf by Croatia’s Jadran Boban, A Near Thing by Italy’s Loris G Nese, Cochena by Portugal’s Diogo Allen, #SainteJulie by French director Giulia Montineri, Entre les guerres by Lebanon’s Sarah Srage, Alea Jacarandas by Algeria’s Hassen Ferhani and Habibi Hussein by Palestine’s Alex Bakri.

Countless premières (the great majority taking place in the presence of their filmmakers) are set to round off the Cinemed gathering, including Stéphane Brizé’s Venetian victor A Good Little Soldier, Sébastien Laudenbach’s animated movie Viva Carmen, Robert Guédiguian’s A Woman Today, Louis-Julien Petit’s En haut de la pile, Khalil Cherti’s Ce qui nous mène à toi (news), Laïla Marrakchi’s Strawberries, Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh’s The Green Eyes, Lauriane Escaffre and Yvo Muller’s Women on Trial, Elsa Amiel’s Dentro, Mounia Meddour’s Malika (news), Aina Clotet’s Alive, Mathias Mlekuz’s Mon fils président and Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s Cannes prizewinner La Bola negra.

Equally deserving of a mention is Spaniard Alberto Rodríguez’s series The Anatomy of a Moment, a short films competition and panorama, young audience séances, a selection entitled Regards d’Occitanie (showcasing the documentaries La lutte armée n’est pas un jeu d’enfant by Nicolas Réglat and Vegapolis by Micha Barban-Dangerfield), a Night in Hell (consisting of five films, including The Holy Boy by Italy’s Paolo Strippoli) and, between 20 and 22 October, the Cinemed Meetings on which Cineuropa will provide further details at a later date.