PRESS RELEASE
Wroclaw, 22 July 2010
CANNES GRAND PRIX WINNER TO OPEN ERA NEW HORIZONS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - THE BIGGEST FILM FESTIVAL IN POLAND.
Cannes GRAND PRIX winner, Of Gods and Men (Des hommes et des dieux) by Xavier Beauvois, will make its Polish premiere as the opening film of the ERA NEW HORIZONS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, which will be held in the city of Wroclaw, Poland, from 22 July to 1 August.
The opening night gala will also showcase Enter the Void, the latest masterpiece from Gaspar Noé, which screened to great acclaim at last year's Cannes Film Festival.
The festival will present over 500 films from 50 countries, including 240 features. It will mostly be comprised of Eastern European or Polish premieres, bringing over 600 screenings to festival audiences and visiting industry guests.
The Quay Brothers, Laura Mulvey, Philippe Mora, Zeki Demirkubuz and Daniel Szczechura will attend the retrospectives of their work. The festival will also pay tribute to Jean - Luc Godard and Wojciech Jerzy Has, presenting full reviews of their works.
Over 11 days, the Festival will host 350 international guests, including the master Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer as well as the world-renowned post-modern Polish American artist Krzysztof Wodiczko.
The NEW HORIZONS International Competition will showcase fourteen director's driven titles which will compete for the Grand Prix (€20 000) - the festival's highest honour awarded by the international jury. This year‘s selection is particularly strong on European and Asian titles. Among them there are: Veiko Õunpuu's The Temptation of St. Tony and Nikolay Renard's Mama. The competition includes one world premiere, the Polish director Adam Sikora's Expelled.
The NEW HORIZONS International Jury includes the acclaimed American director Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation); the Polish animator and screenwriter Piotr Dumała (Franz Kafka, Crime and Punishment); the British artist and filmmaker Gideon Koppel (who was exhibited at the Tate Modern in London and MoMA in New York); the Polish film, opera and theatre director Mariusz Treliński (best known for successful adaptations of Puccini's Madame Butterfly and Mozart's Don Giovanni); and the Turkish filmmaker Yeşim Ustaoğlu (Journey to the Sun, Waiting for the Clouds).
The FIPRSECI Jury includes the British film journalist Laurence Boyce, the Polish journalist Krzysztof Kwiatkowski and the Turkish film critic Yeşim Tabak.
FILMS ON ART International Competition consists of 12 feature-length documentaries that will be judged by the international jury, which will award the Best Film Prize (€10 000). The selected films include a world premiere: Philippe Mora's The Gertrude Stein Mystery or Some Like It Art.
The jury will feature the Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler; the British visual artist Eve Sussman; the Canadian director, writer and journalist Nik Sheehan, whose documentary FLicKeR was awarded in the FILMS ON ART International Competition last year; Grzegorz Jarzyna, one of the most talented theatre director of the young generation in Poland; and Madaleine Molyneaux, independent producer, curator and festival programmer.
NEW POLISH FILMS Competition will showcase seven titles, including a world premiere: Ewa, directed by Adam Sikora.
The international jury will award the Wrocław Film Prize (approx. €25 000) and the Best New Director Prize (approx. €10 000). The members will include the Czech director Petr Zelenka; the Swedish director and film critic Stig Björkman; the German film critic and Secretary General of FIPRESCI Klaus Eder; Nikolaj Nikitin, responsible for the preselection of Eastern European films for Berlinale; and the Eastern European correspondent for Screen International Theodore Schwinke.
All competitions' winning titles are guaranteed distribution in Poland.
Apart from the competitions this year's program focuses on NEW CINEMA from Turkey.
The first edition of the NEW Horizons Studio will take place from July 26th to 29th. The NEW HORIZONS Studio is a new initiative aimed at young film professionals from Poland. The goal is to provide young filmmakers with knowledge about the workings of the international film industry. The programme of the Studio was created together with Sandy Lieberson, a renowned industry expert, Chairman of Film London and collaborator of the Berlinale Talent Campus.
ERA NEW HORIZONS IFF prepared for this year two grand music events.
Mike Patton and his new project Mondo Cane will musically open the festival. The artist will perform new versions of forgotten songs, Italian hits of the 1950s and 1960s.
The only Polish premiere of the film opera by the world-famous Dutch composer Michel van der Aa - The Book of Disquiet, an adaptation of prose by Fernando Pessoa, will close the festival. In the performance, various forms of expression meet in a mosaic structure of a total piece of art - virtual and real spaces, stage dramaturgy and film editing, sounds played live by the orchestra and those that are electronically generated. On the stage, Klaus Maria Brandauer will play the narrator of The Book..., and the Portuguese fado singer Ana Moura will star in video fragments. The wonderful German orchestra musikFabrik will perform the composition by van der Aa.
NEW HORIZONS International Competition
Amer, dir. Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani, France / Belgium 2009
Püha Tõnu kiusamine / The Temptation of St. Tony, dir. Veiko Õunpuu, Estonia / Finland / Sweden 2009
Le quattro volte, dir. Michelangelo Frammartino, Italy / Germany / Switzerland 2010
Mama, dir. Nikolay Renard, Yelena Renard, Russia 2010
La bocca del lupo / The Mouth of the Wolf, dir. Pietro Marcello, Italy 2009
Viajo porque preciso, volto porque te amo / I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You, dir. Marcelo Gomes, Karim Aïnouz, Brazil 2009
Ahasin Wetei / Between Two Worlds, dir. Vimukti Jayasundara, Sri Lanka 2009
Putty Hill, dir. Matt Porterfield, USA 2010
Refrains Happen Like Revolutions in a Song, dir. John Torres, Philippines 2010
Shit Year, dir. Cam Archer, USA 2010
Trash Humpers, dir. Harmony Korine, USA / Great Britain 2009
Mesa sto dasos / In the Woods, dir. Angelos Frantzis, Greece 2009
Expelled, dir. Adam Sikora, Poland 2009
Jao Nok Krajok / Mundane History, dir. Anocha Suwichakornpong, Thailand 2009
For more information on this year's program, visit the official Festival website: http://www.enh.pl/
