Exploring cultural identity at the Amiens Festival
- Six European co-productions will be battling it out for the Golden Unicorn and there will be a tribute to Portuguese director of photography Rui Poças
A diverse offering for this year’s 35th Amiens International Film Festival (FIFAM), which kicks off today and will run until 21 November, boasting a programme that remains faithful to its policy of promoting difference and exploring cultural identity.
Out of the seven contenders in the running for the Golden Unicorn 2015, three European productions, which will have their French premieres at Amiens after being showcased in competition at San Sebastián, stand out in particular. There’s The Apostate [+see also:
film review
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film profile] by Federico Veiroj (co-produced by Spain, France and Uruguay), Eva Doesn’t Sleep [+see also:
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film profile] by Pablo Aguero (co-produced by Spain, France and Argentina), and in the New Directors section, Parasol [+see also:
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film profile] by Belgian director Valéry Rosier. Also in the running are French-Polish co-production Raging Rose [+see also:
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film profile] by Julia Kowalski (which had its world premiere in the alternative ACID section of this year’s Cannes Film, Festival), The Magic Mountain [+see also:
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film profile] by Anca Damian (which was shown in competition at Karlovy Vary and was produced by Romania, Poland and France) and another film which was unveiled in competition at San Sebastián: A Perfect Day to Fly [+see also:
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film profile] by Spanish director Marc Recha.
This year the FIFAM will pay tribute to American filmmaker John Landis and Portuguese director of photography Rui Poças (who has worked, among others, on This Dear Month of August [+see also:
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film profile] and Tabu [+see also:
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interview: Miguel Gomes
interview: Miguel Gomes
film profile] by Miguel Gomes, on Phantom [+see also:
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film profile], Odete [+see also:
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film profile] and To Die Like a Man [+see also:
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film profile] by João Pedro Rodrigues, and more recently, on Zama [+see also:
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interview: Lucrecia Martel
film profile] by Lucrecia Martel), who will also be holding master classes like French filmmakers Pierre Salvadori and Bruno Podalydès, to whom the "L’Ouvroir" (lit. ‘The Workroom’) section is dedicated this year.
Among other events, the Festival will also feature a retrospective on 120 years of Gaumont films, a screening of Adama [+see also:
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film profile] by Simon Rouby (nominated for the European Film Award 2015 for Best Animated Film) and a carte blanche to Potemkine (with Schneider vs. Bax [+see also:
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interview: Alex van Warmerdam
film profile] by Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam). Finally, the Festival will be brought to a close with a screening of The Great Game [+see also:
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film profile] by Nicolas Pariser.
On the industry side of things, the Festival has chosen Romanian director Andrei Cretulescu for the second edition of the Pygmalion support programme which aims to showcase the work of a young European filmmaker and distribute his films as widely as possible. As a reminder, the FIFAM also has a Screenplay development Fund and is a partner of the post-production support programme Final Cut in Venice.
(Translated from French)
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