Don’t miss: Bucharest International Film Festival

March 26-April 2
On at: NCRR (the RomanianPeasantMuseum), Cinema Studio, Elvira Popescu Cinema, Cervantes Institute

The festival brings audiences both independent, small-budget productions and more prominent films awarded at major international festivals. It will open with Oscar winner La Grande Bellezza (reviewed on page XX), which premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where it was screened in competition for the Palme d’Or.

For this edition, Andrei Cretulescu, artistic director of the BIFF festival, has selected nine movies for competition, as follows: 52 Tuesdays (directed by Sophie Hyde), Filth (Jon S. Baird), In Bloom (Nana Ekvtimishvili, Simon Groß), The Selfish Giant (Clio Barnard), Short Term 12 (Destin Cretton), The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher), Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley), Upstream Color (Shane Carruth) and Violet (Bas Devos).

Furthermore, this tenth edition of the festival will screen some of the latest multi award-winning Chilean films – made by directors and producers who have turned Chilean cinema into one of the most relevant in the world – in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of General Pinochet’s military coup which ended with the execution of President Salvador Allende and the commencement of a military dictatorship.

Focus: Chile will feature the following works:
– Gloria (2013, directed by Sebastian Lelio), for which Paulina Garcia won the Best Actress Award at the Berlinale – screened in the presence of the director;
– Carne de perro (2012), the ambitious and shocking debut feature film from writer-director Fernando Guzzoni, awarded in Gothenburg – screened in the presence of the director;
– La Pasión de Michelangelo (2013), the second film by Esteban Larraín, a disturbing drama with strong religious overtones inspired by actual events that occurred during the Pinochet regime;
– Las niñas Quispe (2013), the directorial debut of Sebastian Sepulveda, awarded in Venice in the parallel section Settimana internazionale della critica;
– Matar a un hombre (2014, Alejandro Fernández Almendras) which comes directly from the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize; the classic documentary Salvador Allende (2004, directed by Patricio Guzmán);
– La danza de la Realidad, the first film helmed by veteran Alejandro Jodorowsky after a 23-year break, which premiered at Cannes 2013 in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs section.