January film festival challenges from Trieste to India

On 21 January already the 21st film festival - the most important overview of the Central, Southern and Eastern European film production - will start in Trieste. This year Slovenian films will also be represented in various programmes of the festival.
The film Slovenian Girl by Damjan Kozole will be screened in the competition programme of full length live action films on 26 January. Stealing the Corn by Martin Turk, which has qualified for the short film competition programme, will be shown before this feature on the same evening. As many as three Slovenian films will be shown in the programme dedicated to the borderland issues and compete for the audience awards: River Moment by Anja Medved and Nadja Velušček and This is Earth, My Brother by Jan Cvitkovič on 24 January; and Šentilj-Spielfeld - A Border Crossing that Once Was by Matjaž Ivanišin on Tuesday, 26 January.

The meeting of film professionals from Friuli Venezia Giulia, Slovenia, Croatia and the film delegation from Catalonia, Spain will take place on Tuesday, 26 January, and Wednesday, 27 January. The meeting is organised by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Film Fund in cooperation with the Trieste Festival. Producers, distributors, television editors and fund representatives will present their views of the film production.

From 21 to 28 January the 45th Solothurn Film Festival will take place in Switzerland. This festival focuses on the most recent film production and also invites works from the so called Alpine countries. The programme of films from France, Italy and Austria will be concluded by the Slovenian film essay Letter to a Child by Vlado Škafar, which has already been presented successfully in Rotterdam, Sarajevo and Melbourne.

One of the most important world festivals, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, will take place from 27 January to 7 February. The programme of the best works of 2009 also includes the Slovenian film Slovenian Girl, scheduled for the evening of 31 January. On Tuesday, 2 February, the Slovenian ambassador in The Hague, Mr. Leon Marc, is having a reception in honour of the director Damjan Kozole. The coproduction film market Cinemart represents an important part of this festival. Only a few projects qualify for this opportunity from several hundred projects applied. The Slovenian film Feed Me with Your Words by the director Martin Turk and producer Ida Weiss is among this year's selected projects. It had already been chosen for Cinefondation, the educational part of the Cannes Festival. Feed Me with Your Words already has a great international potential. All that it currently needs is the support for realisation at home.

In January Slovenian films were shown all over the world, proving once again that they are very suitable for spreading the knowledge of Slovenia and its culture.

At the 21st Palm Springs International Film Festival (7 - 18 January) the American festival audience was able to see as many as two Slovenian films: Landscape No. 2 by Vinko Möderndorfer and Slovenian Girl by Damjan Kozole. The speciality of the festival in the Californian Palm Springs is that in its competition programme "Awards Buzz: Best Foreign Language Film" the most extensive selection of candidates for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is shown. Of this year's 65 candidates 41 have qualified for this programme, among them the Slovenian representative Landscape No. 2. Slovenian Girl was chosen for the World Film section, showing the most interesting works of the most recent non American film production. This qualification is very important for Slovenian Girl, since just a bit earlier this film had been purchased for the US distribution.

The animated film Chicory 'n' Coffee will be screened in America between 22 and 31 January, this time at the children's film festival in Seattle. It will be shown in the most innovative animation programme.

Since the end of the last year, Landscape No. 2 has been on a tour of India: after the festivals in Calcutta and Chennai it was also screened at the international festival in the city of Pune (7 - 14 January). At this festival a short presentation of Slovenian film was organised with the cooperation of the Slovenian embassy in India and the Slovenian Film Fund, featuring Rooster's Breakfast by Marko Naberšnik, Installation of Love by Maja Weiss and Blind Spot by Hanna Slak.