Numerous festival hits arriving at both locations – Motovun and Gorski Kotar • Begins ticket presale at special prices
This year, Cinehill Motovun Film Festival aims for new heights, not only by expanding to a new location high up at the Petehovac mountain in Gorski Kotar, but also by ushering in a film program packed with award-winning festival hits. Having a difficult task of selecting a program for two locations, practically two separate festivals, the selectors have once again chosen the best of world independent cinema.
Returning to the festival with his latest film is the icon of European authorial film – Aki Kaurismäki – whose film had inaugurated the first edition of Motovun FF. This year, the bleak romantic comedy, functioning as the fourth instalment of the Finnish director’s working-class trilogy, Fallen Leaves has won the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize. A chronicler of Finnish melancholy with hints of absurdity, Kaurismäki now focuses on two lonely people, Ansa and Holappa, who serendipitously meet in the Helsinki night trying to find the first, only and greatest love of their lives. Their goals are hampered by Holappa’s alcoholism, lost phone numbers, the fact that they don’t know each other’s names or addresses, and life’s general tendency to throw obstacles in the path of those seeking happiness.
With the Cannes Jury Prize in the program Un Certain Regard in tow, Moroccan director Kamal Lazraq’s arrives with Hounds. Shot with non-professional actors, the film follows Hassan and his son Issam who live day to day in a working-class suburb of Casablanca carrying out small trafficking jobs for the local mafia. One evening, they are tasked with kidnapping a man, but trapped in the long night, they have no idea what’s ahead. Lazraq’s debut feature, whose titles refers to two-legged packs instead of the four-legged friends, portrays a sombre and murky milieu of Casablanca far removed from touristy postcards.
Another feature debut arrives at the Hill of Films on the wave of great success. Young British director Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival this year. The film centres on Georgie, a resourceful 12-year-old who continues living alone in their flat on the outskirts of London after her mom dies. She makes money stealing bikes with her best mate Ali and keeps the social workers off her back by pretending to live with an uncle. It works like a charm until her alleged father Jason shows up.
The tickets for these three festival gems, as well as the other films in the main program, are already available in presale. Festival ticket packages at most affordable prices, for both programs, held in Motovun 22 – 24 July, and Gorski Kotar 26 – 29 July, are available for purchase via this link: https://motovunfilmfestival.com/en/tickets-2/
