Euromovies (2)

The impressive 10th edition of the European Film Festival comes to a climax next week at both the St James cinema in Valletta and the Citadel cinema in Gozo. Tonight will see the showing of a Finnish movie, Onnen Varjot (Shades of Happiness).

Directed by Claes Olsen and featuring Tina Limi, Nick Lignell, Santuri Kinnunen and Mika Ahlroth, this is an innovative movie concerning two couples, as yet childless, but whose lives are totally dominated by the children they are yet to produce. This film was nominated for the Golden Goblet at the 2005 Shanghai International Film Festival.

Tomorrow evening that tyro of the British (and subsequently American) movie scene Kenneth Branagh's latest screen version of a Shakespeare play, As You Like It, appears in the festival. Mr Branagh sets this timeless tale of cross-dressing and mistaken identity in 19th-century Japan.

His cast contains thespial big-hitters Kevin Kline, Janet McTeer and Alfred Molina, plus Branagh regular Richard Briers and several very talented Asian actors.

On Sunday evening Poland will be the nominated country and they will be going off on a different tack by presenting six short films at the festival. The longest, Koncert Zyczen (Concerts of Request), is 30 minutes in duration, while the shortest, Lampa (Lamp), is just eight minutes long. The list of films also includes one called Porno. Described as a tale of teenage love, we can hardly wait!

Next Monday the Slovakian film industry will be represented at the festival with a feature called Utek Do Budina (Escape to Budapest). Directed by Miroslav Luther and with Lenka Vlasakova, Ondrej Soklo and Bolek Polivka in the leading roles, this is set in the years just after World War l, when the Austro-Hungarian empire was starting to fall apart.

This is a tale of two people from contrasting backgrounds coming together and falling in love in the newly created country of Czechoslovakia.

El Proximo Oriente, showing on Tuesday, is from Spain and is the work of the distinguished Spanish director Fernando Colombo. This is a Cain and Abel story, literally, because the protagonists do have those names. The married brother, Abel, gets a Muslim girl pregnant, while the less promiscuous Cain initially decides to dig his brother out of a metaphoric hole and marry the girl. But when he learns that in order to do so he will have to convert to Islam, the cultural differences between the families come to the fore.

Showing next Wednesday is the Chinese-made feature Gua Sha (The Treatment). Directed by Xiaolong Zheng, this is a film about a culture clash between traditional Chinese medicine practices and modern-day US society. The film has the distinction of having been screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.

The final film to be shown at this year's European Film Festival is the Slovenian feature Rusevine (Ruins). Directed by Slovenia's best-known director Janez Burger, the setting is a theatre company and the main protagonist is a celebrated writer and director who is about to create what he intends to be his greatest work.

The film explores the fine line between theatrical performance and real life.

All the films shown at St James start at 8.30 p.m., while those showing at the Citadel in Victoria begin at 7 p.m.