The fifth edition of the KRS International Film Festival kicks off on October 29 with two weeks of continuous screening of films. By any standard the festival is an event that showcases some of the best films currently doing the rounds of the international film-festival circuit.
The United States is represented by a film that steers clear of the American blockbuster in an intellectually challenging film called Elegy, directed by Isabel Coixet, starring Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz and the perennially cool Dennis Hopper. This departure from mainstream cinema can be seen as the signature of all the films represented in the festival. Brazil’s City of Men, a loose follow-up on the acclaimed and award-winning City of God hardly needs any introduction and is guaranteed to shatter the screen with rough-edged cinematography.
Similarly filmed but dealing with the subject of illegal abortion Romanian cinema is represented by 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Australian cinema is always full of surprises as with Gillian Armstrong’s Death Defying Acts, an imaginary tale based on the life of the great illusionist Harry Houdini who falls in love with a woman who claims she can contact Houdini’s dead mother.
Five out of the 14 films presented in this year’s festival are directed by women, and for women in particular comes a comical film from Lebanon about a beauty salon. Taking its visual cues from any Almodovar film Caramel deservedly won the Audience Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Following on the genre of comedy is Danny Boon’s Wellcome to the Sticks; a French comedy which has broken all box-office records in the history of French cinema.Horror fans will not be disappointed with Spain’s The Orphanage while romance is served in two contrasting films. India’s over stylised fantasy Saawariya features scenes of snow on the Ganges over a bridge that resembles Venice’s Rialto.
Far more dramatic and tragic is Britain’s Brideshead Revisited, a World War II epic clash of the classes. Austria’s The Counterfeiters is also set in World War II and is the fascinating tale of Solomon Sorowitsch, a Jewish forgerer who was captured by the Nazis and forced to forge the Allies’ currency in an attempt to destroy their economies by flooding them with false currency.Complex and intellectually challenging Canada’s Away from Her, directed by Sarah Polley, recounts the story of a man whose wife is institutionalised because of Alzheimer’s disease and she in turn forgets her husband and falls in love with another patient in the same clinic. The festival also features Children of Glory, a film from Hungary that traces the Soviet Hungarian stand off from the perspective of a waterpolo match between Russia and Hungary in the 1956 Olympic games in Melbourne.
Italy is represented with Saverio Costanzo’s latest work entitled In Memory of Me, a young man’s Via Crucis as he enters priesthood full of doubt about his faith and about himself.Finally, Japan’s contribution to the festival adds that unique touch of animation in a new Manga that comes from the makers of the hugely successful Appleseed. Vexille is a secret agent on a mission in Japan in 2077, where Japan has been isolated from the rest of the world because of its research into robotics that went against UN policies. For animation and Manga lovers this is a unique opportunity to see this complex CGI film work on the big screen.
This edition of the Malta International film Festival is being hosted at St James Cavalier and throughout the two-week festival each film will have three showing times on different days. All screenings are at 3 p.m., 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.