Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2006
by Andre Soares
The Thessaloniki International Film Festival kicked off on Friday with a screening of Stephen Frears’s crowd pleaser The Queen.
Fourteen films have been included in the International Competition section, among them Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Bled Number One / Back Home, the story of an Algerian former convict who suffers a cultural shock after being deported from France back to Algeria; Julia Loktev’s Day Night Day Night, about a suicide-bomber wannabe who gets ready to self-explode in Times Square; Markus Herling’s Schöner leben / Riding Up Front, which revolves around assorted people crossing each other’s paths on Christmas Eve; and Tariq Teguia’s Roma wa la n’touma / Rome Rather Than You, the tale of a young Algerian couple trying to flee that country’s bloody (even if unacknowledged) civil war.
Among the special screenings are Guillermo del Toro’s mercilessly violent fable El Laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth; Marwan Hamed’s solid feature-film debut, Omaret yakobean / The Yacoubian Building, about an iconic Cairo building — a symbol of Egyptian society — now in disrepair; and Richard Linklater’s diet-inducing Fast Food Nation.
Also, a tribute to Wim Wenders, with a screening of 27 of the director’s films, including Lisbon Story, Hammett, and what many consider Wenders’ best film, Der Himmel über Berlin / Wings of Desire; a glimpse at Brazilian filmmaking of the last 40 or so years, with 18 films ranging from Vidas Secas / Barren Lives, Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s classic Cinema Novo drama about extreme poverty in the arid Brazilian Northeast, to Breno Silveira’s recent feel-good box-office hit 2 Filhos de Francisco / Two Sons of Francisco; and finally, a look at 22 recent Chinese films, among them Zhang Yuan’s dysfunctional love story I Love You and Li Shaohong’s Baober in Love.
The Thessaloniki festival runs until Nov. 26. Alain Resnais’s beautiful, haunting Private Fears in Public Places will be the closing night gala screening.
The list of Thessaloniki’s International Competition winners will be posted here.
International Competition:
Bled Number One / Back Home / Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche (France)
Day Night Day Night / Julia Loktev (US)
Drama/Mex / Gerardo Naranjo (Mexico)
Family Ties / Kim Tae-yong (South Korea)
Asr e-Jome / On a Friday Afternoon / Mona Zandi Haqiqi (Iran)
Roz / Pink / Alexander Voulgaris (Greece)
Z odzysku / Retrieval / Slawomir Fabicki (Poland)
Schöner leben / Riding Up Front / Markus Herling (Germany)
Roma wa la n’touma / Rome Rather Than You / Tariq Teguia (Algeria / France / Germany)
I psychi sto stoma / Soul Kicking / Yannis Economidis (Greece)
O Céu de Suely / Suely in the Sky / Karim Aïnouz (Brazil / Germany / Portugal / France)
The Point / Joshua Dorsey (Canada)
Blóðbönd / Thicker Than Water / Árni Ólafur Ásgeirsson (Iceland / Denmark / Germany)
Trouble Makers / Cao Baoping (China)
THE LAST EMPEROR Censored in Iran
2006 Asian Festival of 1st Films Nominees
Leeds International Film Festival - 2006 Awards
ORPHEE / ORPHEUS (1950): DVD Review
“A Century Ago: The Films of 1906″ in New York City
Comments
One Response to “Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2006”
Leave a Reply
Note: All comments are moderated. Different views and opinions are welcome, but abusive/bigoted/flaming comments will NOT be approved. Also, please be aware that the Alternative Film Guide has NO contact information for the talent mentioned in this blog or any information pertaining to or access to distributors'/producers' film prints.
When will they give Wim Wenders an honorary Oscar? it’s time he got one.