23rd Fribourg International Film Festival

From March 14 to 21 the fest will take place in Switzerland celebrating India, Brazil and Peru. The fest will have six sections that I find quite interesting.

The «Out of Bollywood» panorama will introduce Indian cinematography of the past two years. Edouard Waintrop, artistic director of the FIFF, has delved into the lush abundance of Bollywood and non-Bollywood productions, and has selected thirteen films that reflect the current trends of the genre.

The «Fábulas da favela» section presents twelve Brazilian films based on the theme of the favela, a major social phenomenon. The films question both its evolution and its cinematographic representation. Documentaries, thrillers and musical films: compiled by the Brazilian film critic José Carlos Avellar, this panorama demonstrates how a tragic context can become a source of inspiration of a spate of genres.

With an “Hommage à Francisco Lombardi” created in collaboration with the Lima film archive and the Swiss film archive, the FIFF pays tribute to the talent of a Peruvian film director who, despite having earned the reputation of being one of the most interesting contemporary filmmakers, remains relatively unknown outside of the Spanish-speaking world. Ten films of his imposing body of work – which features several adaptations of novels by Mario Vargas Llosa and Dostoevsky – will be screened in Fribourg.

For the “Godfather in Asia” panorama and its six mafia-related films, Edouard Waintrop has sought for the mark of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy in several Asian cinematographic fields, such as Indian cinema and the previously unknown “Black Mumbai” genre, as filmed and produced by Ram Gopal Varma.

With “Revanches de femmes”, the FIFF introduces a program centered on American “rape and revenge movies” of the Seventies – films of feminist inspiration in which women strike vengeance upon men who have sexually abused them. A panorama featuring eight films illustrates how this genre has made its way around the world.

“Made in Nollywood” invites spectators to discover Nigerian films and sheds light on a surprising phenomenon: in terms of output, Nigeria has become the world’s fist cinematographic nation. Some 2.000 films – most of them on digital support – are launched each year on the African market. The FIFF will confront the success of this English-speaking industry to the extremely difficult situation of cinema in French-speaking Africa.

Jury and Opening Film
The five members of the International Jury of the 23d Fribourg International Film Festival have finally been announced: film directors Adoor Gopalakrishnan (India), Nicolas Philibert (France) and Oliver Paulus (Switzerland), film restorator Norma Rivera Valdivia (Peru), and actor/producer Martina Gusman (Argentina), who plays the main role in Pablo Trapero’s Argentinean contribution Leonera, which shall open the festival.

The official selection is revealed at the press conference, 2 weeks before the festival, so I’ll be checking to include the films in this post. The fest site is here.