After its successful debut in 2008, the International Competition for short films on any theme, open to filmmakers around the world, returns this year. The competition – for fiction, animated or documentary films lasting less than 30 minutes – together with the festival’s new annual frequency, firmly place Corto in Bra among the most interesting events in the world of shorts, where audiences have the chance to explore films made in the planet’s biggest metropolises and remotest corners.
The short film genre marks the temporal confines – length – of an imaginary world with no other boundaries, a world full of happy contradictions, young and impetuous, rich and poor, infantile and violent. In a country with increasingly standardized tastes, and worse, an increasingly standardized perception of reality, we believe it is vital to use these small foreign masterpieces to convey a breath of energy and diversity, liberated ways of looking, differently constructed languages and worlds as well as open and at times ferocious critiques of the state of things. rom this perspective the choice of Hiner Saleem as chairman of the International Jury is obvious: The award-winning Iraqi-Kurdish director’s films have always expressed his free and radical way of thinking.
His most significant works include Vodka Lemon (2003), Kilometre Zero (2005), Sous les toits de Paris (Beneath the Rooftops of Paris – 2007) and Dol (2007). On Saturday June 27, one of his most politically incorrect films, Sous les toits de Paris, will be screened at the outdoor cinema. Starring Michel Piccoli, Mylene Demongeot, Maurice Benichou, Marie Kremer and Rudi Rosenberg, the film won the Silver Leopard for best actor at the Locarno Festival in 2007.
A liberated way of looking at the world: This is what the artistic directors sought as they put together the international program. Come to Corto in Bra to see the results for yourself.
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