Prolonged Q&A session in the street, occasioned by the presence of the Italian director Giacomo Abbruzzese during the Bucharest International Film Festival 2023

Bucharest International Film Festival (BIFF) 2023, which is in full swing, is enjoying real success, most of the films are sold out and the invited international personalities are bombarded with questions by the Bucharest audience.

The Italian director Giacomo Abbruzzese, who is in Romania, as part of the Bucharest International Film Festival 2023, participated, on Sunday, September 17, from 6:30 p.m., in a Q&A session after the screening of his film, Disco Boy, which is in the BIFF 2023 competition. The audience present being eager to continue discussions with the Italian director and having to vacate the cinema hall for the upcoming screening, they chose to extend the meeting in the street, in front of the Union cinema.

Giacomo Abbruzzese will also be present today, Monday, September 18, from 6:30 p.m., at the screening of his film Disco Boy, which will run at the Peasant Museum Cinema, and after the screening, he will hold a Q&A session.

Giacomo Abbruzzese – Italian director

A graduate of Le Fresnoy (Faculty of Arts in Tourcoing, France), his short films have been selected and awarded in numerous international festivals including: Oberhausen, Palm Springs, Clermont-Ferrand, Viennale, Mar del Plata, Tampere, Indielisboa, Nouveau Cinéma Montreal, Winterthur, Angers, Turin, Leeds. They were broadcast on television channels such as Canal+, Arte, France3, France2, Sky Art, SVT. He has been invited as a resident artist at the Cannes Film Festival, the Cinéfondation, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival.

In 2022, he was nominated for the César Awards with the documentary America and also this year he completed his first feature film Disco Boy, a France-Italy-Belgium-Poland co-production with Franz Rogowski as the protagonist.

Disco Boy is Berlinale 73 Silver Bear winner (Outstanding Artistic Contribution, Hélène Louvart), Best Film and Best First Feature nominee, Berlin International Film Festival (2023), Hong Kong International Film Festival 2023 nominee (Golden Firebird) and hopes to- and also awards the BIFF 2023 grand prize.

Also, the BIFF 2023 audience had the opportunity on Saturday and Sunday to meet different personalities from the world of international film such as:

Director Gunnar Bergdahl – president of the BIFF 2023 Jury who discussed with those present about his film, Ludmila’s Voice which ran on Saturday September 16, from 20:30 at CREART – Grădina cu filme.

Gunnar Bergdahl is a film critic, writer, filmmaker born in Stockholm in 1951. He studied Journalism at the University of Gothenburg (1971-73). He took care of the artistic programming at the art cinema Hagabion, Gothenburg (1979-1983), was the editor of the film magazine Folkets Bio-Bladet (1984-1987), from 1987 he was part of the Gothenburg Film Festival team, reaching director of this festival (1993-2002). In 1989 he founded the film magazine Filmkonst, whose editor-in-chief he was until 1997.

He was a member of the board of directors of the Swedish Film Institute (1999-2002), host of the SVT public service program “Mediemagasinet” (2003), cultural editor of Helsingborgs Dagblad daily (2004-2014), partner and senior advisor of the company production Vilda Bomben Film AB (since 2015). Published books: Bergman’s XX Century (2000), Ludmila’s Book (2002), Interlude in Smygehuk (about Jan Troell, 2002), Chosen Culture (2008), Ljudmila from Chernobyl (2011).

Filmografie: The Voice of Bergman (doc, 1997), Vocea Ljudmilei (doc, 2001), Ingmar Bergman; Intermezzo (doc, 2002), The Voice of Silence (scurtmetraj, 2003), Ljudmila & Anatolij (doc, 2006), Tracks (doc, 2016), Last Breath (scurtmetraj, 2017), This is the Night (scurtmetraj, 2021).

director Nathan Lauer along with his team behind Who Killed Kenya, met the audience for a Q&A session on Saturday 16th September from 11am at the Peasant Museum Cinema.

Nathan Lauer grew up in Göttingen, Germany. From a young age he was involved in film projects, even spending his last years of high school making an amateur feature film with over a hundred friends and relatives. After traveling the world he moved to Groningen to study International Relations and Philosophy. In addition to his studies, he continued to work as a freelance director and make low-budget films. In 2021, he moved to Berlin to work in financial policy and expand his freelance work. While completing his MA in International Political Economy, he wrote, directed and produced his first proper feature film in Groningen, completing it in 2023. Since then, he has been involved in a wide range of film projects, from to short film competitions and abstract art films to political documentaries.

director Lila Aviles who will participate in the film she directed, Totem, a film that is in the running to win the BIFF 2023 trophy and which you can watch on Tuesday, September 19 and Thursday, September 21 from 6.30pm at Cinema Union, with a session following each screening of Q&A supported by female directors.

Born in Ciudad de Mexico, Lila Avilés studied performing arts with Ximena Escalante and José Caballero and screenwriting with Beatriz Novaro and Paula Marcovich. After directing several short films, he made his feature film debut in 2018 with The Chambermaid, which premiered at the 43rd Toronto International Film Festival.

With this film, Avilés won the Ariel Award for Best Debut and received a nomination for Best Director. The film was also chosen as Mexico’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.

Her second feature, Totem, was entered into main competition at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Ecumenical Award for Best Film, as well as the Best Director Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival 2023.

Katharina Huber will hold a masterclass on Wednesday, September 20, from 5:30 p.m., at the Goethe Institute, followed by a screening of her film A Good Place in the BIFF 2023 competition at 6:30 p.m., at the Union cinema, and afterwards, the director will hold a session of Q&A.

Katharina Huber graduated from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and received a scholarship from the DAAD to study at the Royal College of Art in London. At the time, her main work focused on animation and short films. Back in Cologne, she continued to work as an independent filmmaker. As co-founder of a film studio, she produced the semi-documentary Out of the Gardens, shot in Antarctica. The film premiered at FID Marseille in 2018. In 2020, the short film The Natural Death of a Mouse was awarded at international festivals and received the German Short Film Award. Several of her productions were supported by Film- und Medienstiftung NRW. A Good Place is her first feature fiction film, which she wrote, produced and directed.

Bucharest International Film Festival is organized by the Charter Foundation and the Grigore Vasiliu Birlic Cultural Association, under the High Patronage of His Royal Highness Prince Radu of Romania and realized with the support of the Ministry of Culture, in partnership with the Capital City Hall through ARCUB – the Cultural Center of the Municipality of Bucharest.
Partners: National Cinematography Center, CREART – Center for Creation, Art and Tradition of the Municipality of Bucharest, National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Cinema of the Peasant Museum, Cinema Union, Embassy of Japan, The Japan Foundation, Embassy of Mexico, Embassy of Sweden, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany , Goethe Institute, Italian Institute of Culture in Bucharest, Czech Cultural Center, FCB Bucharest.
LEXUS is the official car of the festival with the support of Lexus București Nord, as a mobility partner.
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Tickets can be purchased both at partner cinemas and online at eventbook.ro.