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ODESA 2018

Woman at War to open Odesa

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- The ninth edition of Ukraine's biggest film event boasts three big competition sections and sidebars with recent festival hits

Woman at War to open Odesa
Woman at War by Benedikt Erlingsson

The ninth edition of the Odesa International Film Festival (OIFF, 13-21 July), the premier film event in Ukraine and one of the largest in Eastern Europe, will open on Friday with the Ukrainian premiere of Benedikt Erlingsson's Cannes Critics' Week title Woman at War [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benedikt Erlingsson
interview: Benedikt Erlingsson
film profile
]
, a co-production between Iceland, France and Ukraine.

The festival's International Competition consists of 12 films from around the world, including Wolfgang Fischer's Styx [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Wolfgang Fischer
film profile
]
, Jagoda Szelc's Tower. A Bright Day [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jagoda Szelc
film profile
]
, Babis Makridis' Pity [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Babis Makridis
film profile
]
, Constantin Popescu's Pororoca [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Constantin Popescu
film profile
]
, Lukas Dhont's Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lukas Dhont
film profile
]
, Jean-Paul Civeyrac's A Paris Education [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jean-Paul Civeyrac
film profile
]
, Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra's Birds of Passage [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
and Annemarie Jacir's Wajib [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
as well as two regional films coming straight from Karlovy Vary, where they had their world premieres: Volcano [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Roman Bondarchuk
film profile
]
by Roman Bondarchuk and Crystal Swan [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Darya Zhuk
film profile
]
by Darya Zhuk. In addition, the Indian-Ukrainian co-production Three and a Half by Daria Gaikalova will have its world premiere in this section.

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In the National Competition for feature films, five titles will be vying for awards, and four of them will enjoy their world premieres at Odesa: Hero of My Time [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Tonya Noyabrova, Delta [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Oleksandr Techynskyi, Tera [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Nikon Romanchenko and the documentary Gogol Doc by Alisa Pavlovska. They will be joined by the Berlinale Panorama title When the Trees Fall [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marysia Nikitiuk
film profile
]
, a co-production by Ukraine, Poland and Macedonia, directed by Marysia Nikitiuk.

The European Documentary Competition includes Shevaun Mizrahi's Distant Constellation [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, Egil Håskjold Larsen's 69 Minutes of 86 Days [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, Alisa Kovalenko's Home Games [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, Flavio Marcheti's Animals and Other People, Gustavo Salmerón's Lots of Kids, a Monkey and a Castle [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gustavo Salmerón
film profile
]
, Andrei Zagdansky's Michail and Daniel, Christina Vandekerckhove's Rabot [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
and Mark Cousins' The Eyes of Orson Welles [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mark Cousins
film profile
]
.

The non-competitive Festival of Festivals section will feature titles such as Samuel Maoz's Foxtrot [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Samuel Maoz
film profile
]
, Jafar Panahi's Three Faces, Abdellatif Kechiche's Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, Cédric Kahn's The Prayer [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Cédric Kahn
film profile
]
, Sergei Loznitsa's Donbass [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sergei Loznitsa
film profile
]
and Paweł Pawlikowski's Cold War [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Pawel Pawlikowski
film profile
]
, while Gaspar Noé's Climax [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Souheila Yacoub
film profile
]
, Asghar Farhadi's Everybody Knows [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
and Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Terry Gilliam
film profile
]
will be part of the Gala Premieres programme.

In collaboration with Séries Mania and the TV channel Ukraine, the Series! section will present the first two episodes of each of five upcoming TV series to the OIFF audience: Who Are You? by Anatoliy Mateshko (Ukraine), Mother Is Wrong by François Velle (France), On the Spectrum by Yuval Shafferman (Israel), The Day by Gilles Coulier and Dries Vos (Belgium), and The Oil Fund by Harald Zwart (Norway).

Finally, in the various sidebar sections, Odesa will celebrate 70 years of Israeli cinema with screenings of five movies made between 2004 and 2015, and the work of Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase, who will enjoy a retrospective. The Special Screenings programme will focus on films by Ingmar Bergman and Kira Muratova, in addition to historical epics such as Michael Kohlhaas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Arnaud des Pallières
film profile
]
and The Captain [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Robert Schwentke
film profile
]
, and several short and feature films related to Ukraine.

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