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FESTIVALS Italy

Courmayeur: 25 years of championing noir

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- The Courmayeur Noir Film Festival is celebrating its silver anniversary from 8 December with seven films vying for the Black Lion, a competition for Italian literature and a section for TV series

Courmayeur: 25 years of championing noir

The Courmayeur Noir Film Festival is celebrating its "silver anniversary" this year, with mystery and the fantastic genre kicking off its 25th edition in the Italian town on 8 December (running until Sunday 13 December), under the guidance of Giorgio Gosetti and Marina Fabbri.

This year, the gathering is bolstering its traditional competition for films (seven movies will be in the running for the Black Lion, with ten national and international premieres) and that for Italian literature (five novels are finalists for the Giorgio Scerbanenco-La Stampa Award) with an ample section dedicated to great TV and to a series of guests who, over the years, have helped to make the rendezvous in Courmayeur a singular event.

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It gets under way with a theme night devoted to the two arthouse series that changed the face of modern television forever: Twin Peaks by David Lynch, which will be 25 years old this year, just like the festival, and X-Files by Chris Carter (winner of the Chandler Speciale Award in 1996) with the big comeback of its (by then) imminent new season. There will be a raft of TV premieres, thanks to the involvement of Fox Crime, Giallo and Rai: the second series of How to Get Away with Murder, starring Emmy Award winner Viola Davis, the French series of the year, Cherif, and another eagerly awaited comeback – that of Ispettore Coliandro by the Manetti brothers.

As for cinema, among the most highly anticipated titles are the new Alex de la Iglesia movie, Mi gran noche [+see also:
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, the spy comedy Anacleto, agente segreto [+see also:
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by Javier Ruiz Caldera, who some are calling the new Almodovar, and the British sci-fi title Brand New-U [+see also:
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by Simon Pummell, with Downtown Abbey star Lachlan Nieboer. In addition, the gathering will host the premiere of the new film by JC Chandor, A Most Violent Year, and independent US title Traffickers by Sean Roberts, Into the Forest by Patricia Rozema, starring Ellen Page, the Audience Award winner at Toronto, The Ardennes [+see also:
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by Belgium’s Robin Pront, and Goosebumps by Rob Letterman, which is aimed at a younger audience.

The star attraction of the 25th–anniversary edition will be US author Joe R Lansdale, who will receive the Raymond Chandler Award 2015, and who will lead a special master class on Chandler, noir, cinema, literature and Texas at Courmayeur. Among the guests from the world of literature who also have links with cinema are Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo De Cataldo, who, in the wake of the twofold literary and cinematic success of Suburra [+see also:
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interview: Stefano Sollima
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(with a TV series also in the pipeline), will be presenting the new novel La notte di Roma. Lastly, attendees will have the chance to see the first images of David Grieco’s P.P.P. Death of the Poet [+see also:
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, which centres on the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini.

The Courmayeur Noir Film Festival is promoted by the General Directorate for Cinema of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, with backing from the Valle d’Aosta Autonomous Region (Tourism Office), the Commune of Courmayeur and the Vallée d’Aoste Film Commission Foundation. 

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(Translated from Italian)

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