It might have passed the twenty-year threshold, but Geneva’s Black Movie Festival doesn’t seem to have lost any of its characteristic ardour. Captained by the close-knit duo composed of directors Kate Reidy and Maria Watzlawick, and sunnier than ever (the festival poster by Neo Neo exudes a pool party atmosphere boasting desert décor in the form of plastic cacti designed by the artist Cetusss), between 17-26 January this year, the festival dedicated to independent film is inviting its audiences to fully immerse themselves in a programme that’s demanding and atypical, but which isn’t short on (self) irony either.

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Dark and troubling, but above all inventive and cathartic, the films on offer fall within no less than ten intriguing categories: “Black Movie For Kids, For Adults”, dedicated to short films, “Rebel Without A Cause”, which, as its name suggests, will home in on the first experiences and emotions of the young protagonists populating this section, “Singular Loners” consisting of a series of particularly audacious films on the theme of isolation, and “To Be Followed…”, the flagship section of the event, presenting the festival’s favourite directors; not to mention “The Women’s Labyrinth”, a section dedicated to women, their courage and their audacity, “Marcos, Ceausescu & Co”, composed of six fiction films inspired by the downward slide of authoritarian power, “Rituals” which talks to the irrational side we each hide within us, “Poor Lonesome Cowboys”, which transports us to far-away places on the edges of humanity, and the unmissable retrospective on the Algerian director who studied in France Malek Bensmail, who will also be delivering a masterclass (as part of the Talking Heads event), as will the legendary Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa.

Amongst the European films scattered among the various sections, we find the highly singular Technoboss [+lee también:
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entrevista: João Nicolau
ficha de la película] by Portugal’s João Nicolau and the co-productions A Girl Missing [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Kōji Fukada and, in a Swiss premiere, A Tale of Three Sisters [+lee también:
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entrevista: Emin Alper
entrevista: Emin Alper
ficha de la película] by Emin Alper, all within the “To Be Followed…” section. In the other festival sections, meanwhile, we find the Swiss film O fim do mundo [+lee también:
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entrevista: Basil Da Cunha
ficha de la película] by Basil Da Cunha, Russia’s Why Don’t You Just Die! by Kirill Sokolov, French work Kongo [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Hadrien La Vapeur and Corto Vaclav, presented in a Swiss premiere in the “Rituals” section, and the Algeria- France co-production Roundabout In My Head [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Hassen Ferhani (“Rebels Without A Cause”). Likewise enjoying its Swiss premiere, though this time falling under the “Poor Lonesome Cowboys” banner, we find the co-production A Dark-Dark Man [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Adilkhan Yerzhanov (Kazakhstan-France). As for the “Singular Loners” group, this year’s offering will include Locarno’s Golden Leopard winner Vitalina Varela [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Pedro Costa, the surrealist documentary Dream Away [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by German artist Johanna Domke and Egyptian director Marouan Omara, the French film Makala [+lee también:
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entrevista: Emmanuel Gras
ficha de la película] by Emmanuel Gras, the Swiss premiere of the Georgian-Russian work by Dmitry Mamuliya The Criminal Man [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] and the road movie Talking About Trees [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Suhaib Gasmelbari. Last but not least, “Marcos, Ceausescu & Co” will play host to the Romanian huis clos Arrest [+lee también:
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entrevista: Andrei Cohn
ficha de la película] by Andrei Cohn, Lithuanian utopia Nova Lituania [+lee también:
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entrevista: Karolis Kaupinis
ficha de la película] by Karosils Kaupinis and Václav Marhoul’s almost unbearable work, The Painted Bird [+lee también:
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entrevista: Václav Marhoul
ficha de la película].