The sixth edition of the European Union Film Festival, ‘Starring Europe’, created to celebrate the best of the European Union’s contemporary film productions, has recently closed in Los Angeles. The Festival screens both feature films and shorts that have won festivals in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Poland and Romania.
The opening evening was dedicated to the American premiere of the Italian film ‘Wherever you are’ (‘Ovunque proteggimi‘) by Bonifacio Angius, which tells the story of the unexpected trip by a mature musician and some unlikely companions. The film was accompanied by ‘Simbiosis Carnal’, a Belgian animated short film on human sexuality directed by Rocío Álvarez. Some of the other films on the billboard that American spectators were able to appreciate was ‘Take it or leave it’, directed by Liina Trishkina-Vanhatalo, focused on the reluctant attempts of a father in raising his new-born baby and ‘Moromete Family: on the Edge of Time’ by the Romanian director Stere Gulea.
At the festival, the Czech Republic was represented by ‘Milada’, a film that outlines the political profile of the Czech revolutionary Milada Horáková, who fought against the Nazi and the Communist to defend the liberty of her Country.
Latvia and Luxemburg instead presented two comic films: ‘The Foundation Of Criminal Excellence’ by the debutant director Oskars Rupenheits and ‘Superjhemp Retörns’, directed by Félix Koch, in which the Luxembourgian super-hero wins a midlife crisis in order to save his Country from cosmic annihilation.
The programming, curated by the EU Consulates in Los Angeles, also included the Austrian film ‘Heaven’s Meadow’, a devastating narration of the sexual violence suffered by a young woman; the Lithuanian film ‘Last Stop is the Moon’, directed by Birutė Sodeikaitė, which tells the story of a young girls who gradually accepts her disease; Croatia’s ‘In the Name of the Strawberry, the Chocolate, and the Holy Spirit’ which tells the story of a priest whose desire for an ice-cream on a Sunday afternoon leads him into comic glitches and mysterious encounters. German directors André Hörmann and Anna Samo presented a story of one of the last survivors to the Hiroshima atomic bomb in the award-winning film ‘Obon’.
Lastly, Bulgaria screened the world preview of ‘Life in Four Seasons’, directed by Stefan.
