Vilnius International Film Festival is opening the Competition Programme “New Europe – New Names”
Internationally acknowledged filmmakers, actors, and film critics are coming to Vilnius tonight, in order to evaluate Vilnius international film festival competition programme “New Europe – New Names”. The grand opening of the competition programme will take place tonight, with a cheerful Serbian comedy “Montevideo, Taste of a Dream”.
The audience of Vilnius IFF have already started watching the eleven films of “New Europe – New Names”. Tonight the honourable international jury is coming to the festival, joining the festival’s audience, however, the task of the guests – to select the best one and announce the winner of Vilnius IFF, which will be awarded by the prize – 7000 euros.
“The films in this competition programme are distinguished by originality and a distinctive trait: they are vivid, unpredictable and unexpected. Those are debut or second films of Central and Eastern Europe’s filmmakers. This year there are eleven competing films from nine countries. The jury will get a difficult task, because all the films are worth to win, but only one will have to be selected,” – says the festival director Vida Ramađkienë.
Tonight, at the “New Europe – New Names” competition programme’s opening event the honourable jury consisting of actors, directors, screenwriters, producers and a film critic will be introduced: Mirtha Ibara – one of the most prominent actresses in Cuba, famous cinema figure in Latin America, and a founder of Cuban National School of Art; Jan Lumholdt – writer and film critic who published a book on Danish director Lars von Trier and received an award of merits in Swedish cinema; internationally famous Russian cinematographer and director Pavel Kostomarov, who’s most recent experimental film “I Love You” is on the festival’s repertoire as well; Macedonian actress and producer Labina Mitevska. Known from famous directors’ Milch Mancevski and Michael Winterbottom films; Latvian Maris Martinsons – director, screenwriter and producer, known for Lithuanian audience as the author of “Loss” and “Amya”. These five people will join the Vilnius IFF audience and watch the films together, and later will decide, which one is worth the prize.
The tonight’s opening event will be crowned with a cheerful Serbian film by Dragan Bjelogric “Montevideo, Taste of a Dream”, which is also one of the competing films in the “New Europe – New Names” programme. The film charmingly recreates the atmosphere of Belgrade in 1930, when the country was desperately trying to form the Yugoslavian soccer team for the World Cup in Uruguay. |
