FEST - New Directors | New Films Festival is a unique celebration of new cinema and new filmmakers. The festival will host its 12th edition in 2016, between the 20th and 27th of June, in Espinho, Portugal. For its upcoming edition, FEST will bring to its audience over 170 shorts and features by some of the most promising directors from around the world.
The festival kicks off on June 20 with the Portuguese premiere of “Tangerine”, Sean Baker’s film where gut laughs are plentiful and whose electric energy and contagious eccentricity will leave nobody indifferent. Sean Baker's most recent work has won a total of 19 awards worldwide, with the fabulous Mya Taylor earning, deservingly so, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actress.
The programme of FEST- New Directors | New Films includes a competitive section for first and second features, with subsections for fiction and documentary.
The Golden Lynx Competitions for Fiction Feature includes 7 films spanning 3 continents. The selection includes the Portuguese premieres of several films that have already been acclaimed in major film festivals. It is the case of “Flocking” by Beata Gardeler, which already counts in its palmares a Crystal Bear at the 2015 Berlinale, or “The Fits” by Anna Rose Holmer which has been praised by critics and public alike in festivals such as the San Francisco International Film Festival and Sundance.
The complete list of titles is:
"Aloys" by Tobias Nolle (Switzerland/France)
“Granny's Dancing on the Table” by Hanna Skold (Sweden)
“The Fits” by Anna Rose Holmer (USA)
“Baby Bump” by Kuba Czkaj (Poland)
“Treppe Aufwaerts” by Mia Meyer (Germany)
“Flocking” by Beata Gardeler” (Sweden)
“Easy Ball” by Juan Fernandez Gebauer & Nicolas Suarez (Argentina)
Three films will compete for the Golden Lynx for Best Documentary Feature. Female figures are at the forefront of two of the titles in this section. “Alisa in Warland” by Alisa Kovalenko & Liubov Durakova (Poland/Ukraine) is a truly unique first person experience of a young woman's search for truth in times of war, while “Starless Dreams” by Mehrdad Oskouei (Iran) offers a rare glimpse inside a locked-up world and a respectful portrait of young women struggling to recapture some sense of personal dignity. The selection is completed by the only Portuguese title in the features competitions, “Brothers” by Pedro Magano (Portugal). The film, set in the São Miguel island, in the Azores, is an impressive voyage through a tradition without equal, featuring breathtaking photography work. “Brothers” offers a portrait of an island not just lost in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, but also lost in time.
FEST- New Directors | New Films also includes a competitive section for shorts- with four subsections, each with a dedicated Silver Lynx Award: fiction, documentary, animation, and experimental.
With 24 films in the lineup and 4 sessions in total, the Fiction Short section includes titles such as “Operator” by Caroline Bartleet (UK)- winner of the BAFTA for Best British Short this year- or “Black Friday” by Roxana Stroe (Romania), whose film “A Night in Tokoriki” received the Special Jury Prize in the Generation 14plus at the 2016 Berlinale.
The Silver Lynx competition for Documentary Short includes 11 titles. Among them is “9 days – From my window in Aleppo” by Floor van der Meulen (Netherlands), a document of the start of the Syrian uprising in Aleppo as seen through the eyes- and window- of Syrian photographer Issa Touma.
Seven films are competing for the Silver Lynx for Best Experimental Short. The work of directors from Taiwan, Germany, Argentina, Egypt, France, and Greece, these films challenge the norms and explore new ground in filmmaking.
The Animation Short section proposes, through its 9 selected films, an exploration of the power of animation techniques to tell compelling and engaging stories on screen.
The panorama of competitive sections is completed by NEXXT, a section dedicated exclusively to student films, which is co-programmed in partnership with over 15 film schools.
FEST New Directors | New Films also features a series of non-competitive screenings. These include Flavours of the World, which focuses each year on certain countries or regions where the FEST selection team has identified encouraging signs of the emergence of a new and unique generation of filmmakers. This year Ireland, Iceland and Portugal have been selected as the countries in focus.
For its 12th edition, FEST also takes a look back at new works by filmmakers that have had films shown in past editions of the festival in its retrospective section, Be Kind Rewind.
Last, but not least, FEST- New Directors | New Films includes this year a selection of films dedicated to young viewers (in the section called Festinha) and to the elderly in the local community (through FEST Social). These screenings are part of a series of social responsibility activities through which FEST contributes to audience development at a local level.
The festival concludes with the Award Ceremony on June 26th, followed by the screening of “New World”, collectively directed by Elżbieta Benkowska, Michał Wawrzecki and Łukasz Ostalski. The three Polish directors follow three different story-lines, three different films, three different characters, but all with one common path: building a new life in a new world.
In addition to the screenings, FEST includes a Pitching Forum, in which participants have the chance to present their projects for shorts, features, television series or documentaries to a panel of experts, producers and investors who are looking for new ventures to support and invest in. A total of 31 projects have been selected this year, presented by 29 filmmakers coming from 22 countries on 3 continents (Europe, Asia and South America).
FEST New Directors | New Films is unique in that it also includes FEST - Training Ground, a 6 day educational forum that proposes a series of workshops and master classes lead by top experts with years of experience in the film industry. This year we count among the guests of the festival professionals such as: Gemma Jackson, Emmy winning production designer of “Game of Thrones”, Bela Tarr, Hungarian director of “Satantango” and “A Turin Horse”, whose films have been awarded in Cannes and Berlin, as well as Mark Sanger, Oscar winning editor of “Gravity”.
Through the festival and its parallel events, FEST brings together the highest established film professionals and young filmmakers who are starting to carve their path in the industry, providing them with an ideal context for exchanging ideas and sparking collaborations. For more details, visit www.fest.pt