In these early days of summer, the Brussels International Film Festival (BRIFF) is inviting Belgian film lovers to discover unmissable brand-new and classic films, shining a light on international arthouse cinema. The festival is notably organising three competitions, which achieve near gender parity overall, a feat rare enough to be mentioned here. In fact, this 7th edition of the event, unspooling between 25 June and 3 July, is set to open with the screening of Swiss filmmaker and actress Laetitia Dosch’s first feature film, Dog on Trial [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Laetitia Dosch
scheda film], which was presented in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section.

First up, the International Competition will take us from Argentina to Denmark by way of Corsica, and conceals several high-calibre filmmakers within its ranks, such as Yorgos Lanthimos who’ll be sharing Kinds of Kindness [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Arnaud e Jean-Marie Larrieu
scheda film] - both of which were discovered in Cannes - and Michel Franco with Memory, which was presented in Venice last year. We’ll also see confirmed talent along the lines of Claire Burger, with her third feature film Foreign Tongue [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Claire Burger
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intervista: Benjamín Naishtat e María …
scheda film]. The final film competing in this section is In His Own Image [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Thierry de Peretti
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As for Director’s Week, a selection dedicated to European cinema which looks to shine a light on emerging talent, seven films are in the offing. Firstly, there’s the Danish documentary The Mountains [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Christian Einshøj, which revisits the director’s family’s trauma following the death of his brother 25 years earlier. Another family documentary comes in the form of Keeping Mum [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Emilie Brisavoine
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intervista: Laura Ferrés
scheda film] by Spanish director Laura Ferrés, and family forms the focus once again in Je’vida [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Finland’s Katia Gauriloff, homing in on the coming together of an aunt and niece. There’s also the Hispanic-Italian co-production Animal/Humano [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Alessandro Pugno
scheda film] by Alessandro Pugno, and a third documentary entitled Riverboom by Swiss director Claude Baechtold, which looks back on the filmmaker’s experience as a young journalist who landed in Afghanistan the day after 11 September. A different tone is struck by the last film on the agenda of this particular line-up, Plastic Guns [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Jean-Christophe Meurisse
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The festival is also hosting a National Competition gathering together 8 feature films. We have to remark upon the presence of three female-led documentaries in the first person in this line-up, all exploring the questions which three young women and children of exile ask themselves, in the form of D’Abdul à Leïla [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Leila Albayaty
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intervista: Samira El Mouzghibati
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intervista: Angie Obeid
scheda film] by Angie Obeid. A family of vampires is at the heart of Céline Rouzet’s fiction film, For Night Will Come [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Céline Rouzet
scheda film], meanwhile, whereas a group of siblings seek out the roots of evil in Michèle Jacob’s Lost Children [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Michèle Jacob
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intervista: Alexe Poukine
scheda film] sees Alexe Poukine examining public hospitals and asking how nurses can themselves be kind when they’re crushed by a hostile institution. Last but not least, in Katika Bluu [+leggi anche:
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