The Trieste Film Festival, which focuses on the cinema of Central and Eastern Europe, announced the lineup for its 26th edition Saturday.
The festival opens with Vera Glagoleva’s Two Women, starring Ralph Fiennes. The Russian period film is based on Turgenev’s play A Month in the Country. Impressively, Fiennes speaks his part in Russian.
Read more Toronto: Ralph Fiennes, Timur Bekmambetov Board ‘Petersburg Carousel’
Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi will give a master class on Jan. 18. He will also present the Italian premiere of his latest film Foreign Body, a psychological drama in contemporary Poland.
Three competition prizes will be awarded by the public, for best feature film, best short film, and best documentary.
The feature film competition includes two recent works by Bulgarian filmmakers, The Lesson, by Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, and Viktoria, by Maya Vitkova.
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Two films that premiered in Toronto will make their Italian debut in Trieste, including Martti Helde‘s In the Crosswind, about Stalin’s ethnic cleansing of the Baltics, and Zvonimir Juric‘s Croatian social drama The Reaper. All feature competition films are Italian premieres.
Trieste will also screen eight of the 10 films competing for the prestigious Lux Prize, which awards $103,000 to a top film from the European Union. Contenders this year include Alice Rohrwacher‘s The Wonders, Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure and Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Ida.
Jan Komasa‘s Warsaw 44, about love and friendship during the city’s brutal uprising of 1944, will close the festival.
Trieste Film Festival runs from January 16-22.
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