The Trieste Film Festival is gathering together fans of Central and Eastern European cinema between 21 and 28 January for its 34th edition. “At the heart of our event,” explains director Nicoletta Romeo, "is a macroscopic area, a genuine hotbed of talent which produces brave, diverse and often unconventional films each and every year, which are sometimes imperfect but always bursting with vitality and courage. A kind of cinema that’s in constant dialogue with reality, analysing and transforming it, and making it universal. What we’re trying to do is to draw up the most exhaustive map possible of an incredibly multifaceted film offering, whether films about love or war, comedies or thrillers, militant documentaries or film essays.”

Nine titles are battling it out in the Feature Film Competition, set to be judged by Weronika Czołnowska, Beatrice Fiorentino and Stefan Ivančić. From Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section come two films, Romania’s Metronom [+lire aussi :
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interview : Alexandru Belc
fiche film], which earned Alexandru Belc the Best Director prize, and Ukraine’s Butterfly Vision [+lire aussi :
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interview : Maksym Nakonechnyi
fiche film] by Maksym Nakonečnyj, which tells a story about a prison in the Donbass region. Fucking Bornholm [+lire aussi :
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interview : Anna Kazejak
fiche film] by Anna Kazejak is a caustic Polish comedy, while the meaning of love and life is at the heart of Georgian director George Ovashvili’s Beautiful Helen. An invisible war is fought in Croatian filmmaker Juraj Lerotić’s autobiography Safe Place [+lire aussi :
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interview : Juraj Lerotić
fiche film], which won multiple awards at the latest Locarno Film Festival, while Sonne [+lire aussi :
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interview : Kurdwin Ayub
fiche film] by Iraqi-Austrian director Kurdwin Ayub was crowned Best First Work at the 2022 Berlinale. The world of female culturalism is central to Gentle [+lire aussi :
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interview : László Csuja et Anna Nemes
fiche film] by Hungary’s László Csuja and Anna Eszter Nemes, which was presented at Sundance, and Black Stone [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] by Greek filmmaker Spiros Jacovides is a mockumentary blending black humour and social critique, while one young person’s amnesia in Marko Šantić’s Slovenian movie Wake Me [+lire aussi :
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interview : Marko Šantić
fiche film] reflects the revisionism characteristic of an entire society.

Added to these are six titles screening out of competition: Italian works The Adventures of Gigi the Law [+lire aussi :
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interview : Alessandro Comodin
fiche film] by Alessandro Comodin and Jailbird [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] by Andrea Magnani, Polish movie Bread and Salt [+lire aussi :
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interview : Damian Kocur
fiche film] by Damian Kocur, Czech title Somewhere Over the Chemtrails [+lire aussi :
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interview : Adam Koloman Rybanský
fiche film] by Adam Koloman Rybanský, and Slovakia’s Victim [+lire aussi :
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interview : Michal Blaško
fiche film] by Michal Blaško.

Eleven films feature in the Documentary Competition, meanwhile (judged by Rok Biček, Freddy Olsson and Julia Sinkevych), including Blue/Red/Deport by Lithuania’s Lina Lužytė, Croatian movie Deserters by Damir Markovina, and Latvia’s Sisters in Longing by Elita Kļaviņa, while another six documentaries are set to screen out of competition, including Mariupolis 2 [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] by Mantas Kvedaravičius, which bagged the title of Best Documentary at the European Film Awards.

The Perfect Number by Krzysztof Zanussi will provide the festival with an opportunity to bestow the Eastern Star Award upon the Polish master, while four Special Events are also on the agenda: Il boemo [+lire aussi :
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interview : Petr Vaclav
fiche film] by Petr Václav, which follows the adventures of the eighteenth century composer Josef Mysliveček; L’estate sta finendo – Appunti su Furio, which is the new short film by Laura Samani, who directed the multi-award-winning movie Small Body [+lire aussi :
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interview : Laura Samani
fiche film]; Macedonia’s The Happiest Man in the World [+lire aussi :
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interview : Teona Strugar Mitevska
fiche film] by Teona Strugar Mitevska, which earned itself a round of applause in Venice; and Souvenir d’Italie by Giorgio Verdelli, which paints a portrait of musician and showman Lelio Luttazzi.

Divided into three selections, the Short Film Competition will offer up seventeen titles, while several other movies are also set to screen out of competition, including Radu Jude’s new work The Potemkinists. Other sections confirmed for this year are Off the Beaten… Screens, Wild Roses: Women Directors in Europe, and the Corso Salani Prize.