News

European Debuts

May 7th 2009 | The European debuts competition has been a part of Zlín’s film festival for several years. In this section audiences get to watch ten films from various parts of Europe. The first films, mostly from young directors, bring a fresh and often novel look at r

The European debuts competition has been a part of Zlín's film festival for several years. In this section audiences get to watch ten films from various parts of Europe. The first films, mostly from young directors, bring a fresh and often novel look at reality and give the rest of the festival sections more character.  This year in this particular competitive category we're not only introducing films that have stirred up positive reactions at top film festivals in Europe (Venice, Berlinale),  but also films that have been hitherto unknown.

For now we'd like to bring your attention to these films: The film Pa-ra-da (Italy, Romania, France 2008), from Italian director and successful cameraman Marco Potencorvo, tells the riveting story about a real entertainer named Miloud Oukili, who comes to Bucharest in Romania and soon gets involved in saving many children living in horrifying conditions. The phenomenon of children's gangs living mainly underground and in temporary shelters around Bucharest's main train station was also the theme of the documentary Children Underground (directed by Edet Belzberg, Romania 2001). The film by Marco Potencorvo was successfully screened at the festival in Venice.

The debut by the young director Esther Rots Can Go Through Skin (Kan door huid heen, Netherlands 2009) is an intimate confession of a young heroine who lived through a traumatising experience of being attacked and then tries to make sense of her life again alone in a house in a village. The film was shown at this year's Berlinale film festival in the Forum section, where it caused a very positive response.

The film Diaries (Diari, Italy 2008) by director Attilio Azzola combines three stories into one summer adventure for a group of young people. It's a real Italian film about one summer that has been permanently marked in the lives of the main characters. The film won the Grand Prix Ecrans Juniors prize at the Cannes film festival in 2008.

The French film Ain't Scared (Regarde-moi, France 2007) by the young director Audrey Estrougo is an authentically composed picture of a group of young people living in a multicultural society in a ghetto on the outskirts of Paris called "La Cité" and "La Banlieue". With a lack of anything else entertaining to do, this multiethnic group of young people spends a great deal of their time together and is viewed as a hierarchical group of male and female characters. The film fits within a series of similar films dealing with this topic (The Hate/La haine 1995, directed by Mathieu Kassovitz and Games of Love and Chance/L'Esquive 2003, directed by Abdel Kechiche), but because of they way its presented, it's a more forgiving picture of a very problematic phenomenon.

In connection to the Spanish Days of European Cinematography that we've already informed you about, the European Debuts competition will present the Spanish film Amateurs (Amateurs, Spain 2008) by director Gabriel Velázquez. It's the story of a young girl named Blanca, desperately looking for her true father, who is finally taken in by an old man. He, like the main heroine, is yearning for company. This is a film about the search for mutual understanding on a journey from France to Spain. The main role of the young girl Blanca is played by Emilie de Preissac, who also played in the film Ain't Scared (but with very short hair).