Gdynia's favourite to open Kaunas International Film Festival

The key of Kaunas International Film Festival beginning October 1 will be set by Malgorzata Szumowska's autobiographical film 33 Scenes from Life which has won almost all major awards in Gdynia Film Festival.

The Polish director representing the generation of the filmmakers in their 30s pictures the experiences and questions that fell on her after the sudden death of her relatives, and through the scenes of the film matures the laws of denuded death and love. In Gdynia Film Festival 2008, 33 Scenes from Life won the awards for the best directing, cameraman, supporting performance by an actress and best film music.

The festival which is organised in Kaunas and Vilnius for the third time has prepared four programmes with more than thirty films and 80 screenings. The festival’s programme is dominated by the works of independent European and American filmmakers created in 2007-2009 including exceptional documentaries.

“We composed the festival’s programme of the top quality, unexpected, original discoveries that often transcend the boundaries of film genres and arts. We hope that the measured festival’s programme as well as aesthetical and visual images will echo the searches of cineastes and provide them with the desired answers,” said Tomas Tengmark, producer of Kaunas Film Festival’s programme.

Most of the films – eleven – were included in the festival’s Wide Angle programme section, which covers the entire range of relevant societal issues and can be distinguished for strong stories. The festival’s distinctive annual programme Music Moves the World will present 8 films this year including a few rather painful sections of the lives of musicians. Festival’s special programme Nordic Sounds in Film brings 4 films and a unique opportunity for the viewers to meet and communicate with the composers of the music scores of these films as well as to attend their concert. 9 more films will be presented in the festival’s new programme section All the Muses, which depicts the world of art. One of the films of this programme, Bouzkachi – The Song of the Steppes, will end the festival in Kaunas.

“It is very interesting that even now, a couple of weeks before the festival, we still get propositions from Italian, Indian, American and African filmmakers to include their films in the programme of Kaunas Film Festival. Therefore, we are still considering an additional impromptu programme section Last Minute Films,” Ilona Jurkonytė, director of Kaunas Film Festival, reveals the festival’s backstage.