New Directors New Film Festival starts Monday in Espinho and, covering what the organization defines as “four sub-festivals”, reaches the stage of “full maturity”, with 240 films, 21 concerts and 34 industry trainers.
“We have reached the stage of full maturity, when the festival finally presents itself with the ‘whole body’ that we idealized”, declared to Lusa the founder and director of the event, Filipe Pereira.
Referring to the four sub-festivals that now make up this event of the district of Aveiro, the same responsible added: “We have the finished films festival, the film music festival, the training by professionals of the sector and the ‘pitching’ for new projects, and all this together guarantees the participant a truly unique experience, where in the afternoon he can learn in a room with a renowned director and in the evening he can have a drink with him at a concert”.
Running until June 16th in several theaters in the city of Espinho, FEST will show 240 films from 58 nationalities and, of those, 183 will be in competition. Aspects that stand out from this offer are “the predominance of women among the directors and the relevance of social and gender issues among the themes addressed”, anticipated Filipe Pereira.
In the feature film category there will be 10 films in competition and, of these, FEST’s programming director, Fernando Vasquez, highlighted “War Pony”, which, directed by Americans Gina Gammell and Riley Keough, won the award for best first work in Cannes, for the way it “portrays the harsh reality of Native American communities in the notorious Pine Ridge reservation”.
The competition of short films will include 18 fiction works, 13 documentaries, 10 animated, nine experimental, 23 Portuguese productions, 40 academic works, and 60 conceived by children and young people.
From this list, Fernando Vasquez highlights, in the documentary category, “Man Caves”, in which the Swiss Céline Pernet addresses “the issue of the crisis of masculinity today”, and the film “And the king said…what a fantastic machine”, in which Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck analyze “the obsession for image in contemporary society”, which earned them distinctions at the Sundance and Berlin festivals in 2022.
In the Portuguese competition, FEST’s programming director highlighted the return of directors Rúben Sevivas and Hugo de Sousa, and the presentation of new works by “promising authors such as Luís Campos and Joana Peralta”.
As for the panoramic sessions, one of the bets for 2023 is the retrospective of Peruvian filmmaker Claudia Llosa, “an unavoidable name in Latin American cinema, a very significant voice when it comes to the portrayal of women and indigenous people, and winner of the Golden Bear in Berlin with the film ‘The Scared Teat'”, which will be shown in Espinho.
The great novelty of the 19th edition of the event is, however, the subfestival “Music Walk With Me”, launched in collaboration with the Espinho Auditorium to divulge musicians who have already conceived soundtracks for cinema or whose sound has the potential to enter the sector.
The Legendary Tigerman, Sensible Soccers, Castello Branco, Motsa, and Yosune will be some of the names on stage, among artists from several countries.
The most demanding component of FEST is, even so, the Training Ground, which motivates about 800 inscriptions in the several ‘master classes’ conducted by professionals of the audiovisual industry.
Filipe Pereira points out six presences at this level: Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, Danish director Lone Scherfig, American animation director Brenda Chapman, her fellow countrywoman and casting director Nancy Bishop, and French editor and colorist Marc Boucrot.
Besides special initiatives for the children and school community, the 19th edition of the Espinho festival also includes the FEST Pitching Forum, in which 24 previously selected candidates will present their projects to international decision-makers such as producers, investors, fund managers, distributors and festival programmers.
“The film ‘Goodbye Julia’, by Sudanese Mohamed Kordofani, for example, was one of the great successes of the 2023 Cannes festival and was being developed here in Espinho,” recalled Filipe Pereira. “It started as just an idea and it was FEST that helped develop the project, making it reach the right people.”
