The 50th San Francisco International Film Festival — according to its organizers, the first such event in the Americas to turn 50 — will take place between April 26 – May 6, 2007.
Among the scheduled films are:
On opening night, Emanuele Crialese's Nuovomondo / Golden Door (above), Italy's submission for this year's best foreign-language film Academy Award will be presented at the Castro Theatre. Nuovomondo follows an Italian family who leaves a remote Sicilian village for the United States in 1913. Charlotte Gainsbourg heads the cast.
Also: Pedro Costa's Juventude em Marcha / Colossal Youth (upper photo), the director's third installment in his ongoing portrayal of the residents of the Fontainhas district of Lisbon, a slum populated mostly by immigrants from the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde; Philippe Falardeau's quirky Congorama, winner of Quebec's Jutra Award for best film; Daniel Wu's The Heavenly Kings (middle photo), about three Hong Kong friends who form a boy band; and Ricardo Elias' Os 12 Trabalhos / The 12 Labors (lower photo), which transposes the Hercules myth to the urban chaos of 21st-century São Paulo where a young working-class man tries to make a living as a delivery boy. Star Sidney Santiago shared the Best Actor award at last year's Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival.
Plus: Patrick Tam's Hong Kong Film Award best picture winner Fu zi / After This Our Exile (upper photo), about the difficult relationship between a boy (Gouw Ian Iskandar) and his abusive father (Aaron Kwok); Verónica Chen's Argentinean psychological drama about competitive swimmers, Agua / Aguas argentinas (middle photo); and Italian superstar Kim Rossi Stuart's directorial debut, Anche libero va bene / Along the Ridge (lower photo), a family drama that brought Rossi Stuart a best new director nomination for this year's Nastri d'Argento.
And more: Ray Lawrence's well-received Australian psychological crime drama Jindabyne (upper photo), starring Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney, who were both nominated for the Australian Film Institute Awards; Olivier Dahan's box-office hit La Môme / La Vie en Rose (middle photo), starring Marion Cotillard as French singing legend Edith Piaf; Rajnesh Domalpalli's Vanaja, about a low-caste fisherman's daughter who struggles to find her place on the dance stage; and Alain Resnais' haunting Coeurs / Private Fears in Public Places (lower photo), an intelligent, funny, touching, and beautifully acted, directed, and photographed fairy tale about the human inability to connect with others.
And even more: Mary Olive Smith's documentary A Walk to Beautiful (upper photo), about young Ethiopian women traveling to Addis Ababa in order to receive adequate health care; Pascale Ferran's Lady Chatterley (middle photo), winner of the French Academy's César for best film; Marwan Hamed's remarkably accomplished — and quite controversial — feature-film debut, Omaret Yacoubian / The Yacoubian Building (lower photo), about intimate goings-on in one of Cairo's landmark apartment buildings; and Nanni Moretti's multiple Nastri d'Argento-nominee Il Caimano / The Caiman, a surrealistic attack on (at the time) Italian prime-minister Silvio Berlusconi.
And finally: Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali, the first installment of Ray's revered Apu Trilogy of the mid-to-late 1950s. Pather Panchali isn't the best one of the three — Aparajito is by far the most involving — but even though Ray spends way too much time showing mosquitoes walking on water, this introduction to Apu's poor Indian family offers several touching moments.
Tiburon Film Festival Awards – 2007 Winners