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Sometime last year, just before the first Valletta Film Festival (VFF) was launched, Oliver Mallia, one of the festival’s directors, had expressed a desire that it would be the first of many.
Clearly that first edition, which saw over 5,000 tickets being sold for the 77 screenings held and around 2,000 people attending the free screenings, was successful enough to warrant a second edition, and sure enough, the capital is once more becoming a cinema.
Organised by The Film Grain Foundation, the second VFF will see over 40 feature films, documentaries and short films being screened from Friday until next Sunday in three different open air venues – Pjazza Teatru Rjal, Fort St Elmo and St George’s Square – and two cinemas (the Embassy Cinemas and Spazju Kreattiv).
Once again, the line-up is an enthralling and eclectic selection of award-winning and critically-acclaimed films from every corner of the globe, celebrating the diversity, multi-culturalism, and all that international cinema has to offer its discerning patrons.
A jury will bestow the Triton Awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Actor, Best Actress Best Documentary and Best Short Film from among the seven features, seven documentaries, and 26 short films in competition. A new competitive section is being launched this year – the Teens Only, section which features five films whose storylines are relevant to youths aged 13 to 18 and audiences themselves will be invited to vote for the Triton Teens Choice Award.
As with last year, the festival will also include special screenings and a series of sidebar events. The special guest at this year’s festival will be Sir Alan Parker, the English film director, who will be present at a screening of his 1978 film Midnight Express, at Fort St Elmo, where the film was shot. The screening will form part of events celebrating Valletta’s 450th anniversary and its links to cinema.
American director Terry Gilliam has been named 2016 Master of Cinema. This distinctive director’s work will be celebrated with the screening of acclaimed films Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Fisher King and Brazil.
The festival kicks off on Friday with a screening of Hedi, an award-winning production from Tunisia set against the backdrop of the changes the country is currently going through. The film’s two protagonists, Majd Mastoura and Rym Ben Messaoud, will be present at the event.
The feature film competition includes seven films from across Europe and Turkey. The films include The Yard (Sweden) in which a single father loses his job and United States of Love (Poland/Sweden) about the myriad adventures in love of four Polish women. In Parents (Denmark), a couple try and rekindle their youthful passion; Spanish comedy Pikadero finds a penniless young couple trying to consummate their relationship; in Irish/Dutch/ Luxembourger production Mammal a woman embarks on a relationship with young boy; and Rauf, from Turkey, is all about first love.
The line-up is an eclectic selection of award-winning films from every corner of the globe
German drama 24 Weeks deals with the delicate subject of abortion and is sure to stir some high emotions.
The powerful documentary competition line-up includes Walls, a Spanish production that tells the stories of people living behind walls on borders around the world, Brothers of the Night from Austria, which takes a look at the underground activities of the Bulgarian Roma, France’s Hotel Machine discovers the hotels in conflict zones across the world which housed journalists covering said conflicts and Socotra – The Island of Djinns from (Spain) visits the vanishing world of the island of Socotra.
The Land of the Enlightened from Belgium documents the lives of children in the wild Afghani mountains, while the quirky Romania/US co-production Hotel Dallas examines the obsession of a hotel owner with eighties American TV series Dallas – and series co-star Patrick Duffy turns up in a cameo role! From Germany/Poland comes Zud, which charts the intense relationship between a man, his son and their wild horse.
The Short Film competition boasts 26 films representing 23 countries and many co-productions. While Europe is vastly represented – Malta included – the field also includes entries from Iraq, the US, Turkey, Israel, Afghanistan, Venezuela and Russia.
The festival is also repeating the two non-competitive sidebar events. “Without Borders” this year will celebrate cinema from the Middle East, with a mixture of award-winning dramas and comedies from this conflicted region from countries as diverse as Israel, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Kurdistan and even Saudi Arabia, where cinema screenings are banned.
The second sidebar section is Islanders, which once more offers films from and about islands all across the earth, with productions from Italy/France, Iceland/Denmark and Belgium and further away, such as Columbia/Ecuador, Thailand and the first film ever produced in Vanuatu.
The festival is also offering special screenings of films including Italian documentary Born to be Free, the documentary Tomorrow, the Venezuelan/Mexican Drama From Afar and for the first time a Maltese feature film, with the eagerly-anticipated Limestone Cowboy making its debut.
This year’s festival also includes a one-day workshop entitled Directing Actors, a masterclass in Writing the Short Film, a conversation about distributing your documentary and a conference dedicated to the Cinema of Small Nations.
The closing ceremony takes place on June 11.
www.vallettafilmfestival.com