Italian brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s “Wondrous Boccaccio,” a film adaptation of one of Italiy’s classic literary masterpieces, will open the 2015 edition of Beijing International Film Festival, set to kick off on April 16.
This year’s film fest will have 15 film titles vying for the Tiantan Awards and four gala premieres.
Two of the 15 competing movies are Chinese films: Jean Jacques Annaud’s “Wolf Totem” and Tsui Hark’s “The Taking of Tiger Mountain.”
Iran’s “Impermanent” (Amir Azizi), Italy’s “La Scelta” (Michele Placido), Japan’s “Love and Peace” (Sono Sion), Mexico’s “The Beginning of Time” (Bernardo Arellano), U.K.’s “The Falling” (Carol Morley) and South Korea’s “The Whistleblower” (Yim Soon-rye) are also included.
Completing the list are “A White, White Night” (Ramil Salakhutdinov, Russia), “Battle for Sevastopol" (Sergey Mokritsky, Russia/Ukaraine), “Children” (Jaro Vojtek, Slovakia/Czech Republic), “The Silence of Rio” (Carlos Tribono Mamby, Columbia), “Experimenter” (Michael Almeredya, U.S.), “Fig Fruit anf the Wasps” (M S Prakasj Baby, India) and “Gruber Geht” (Marie Kreutzer, Austria).
“Experimenter” will open the festival’s competition section on April 17. Winners will be revealed during the closing ceremony on April 23.
The nominations were chosen from a list of pre-selected foreign titles proposed by Marco Muller, the festival’s general advisor, together with a team of movie consultants and coordinated by Chen Zhiheng.
According to Muller, “the line-up reflects the goals and commitments of BJIFF, to screen and celebrate world and international premieres of diverse, cutting-edge international cinema.”
Meanwhile, apart from the Taviani brothers’ title, the four gala screenings also include “NH10” (Navdeep Singh), “Downshifter” (Roman Prygunov) and “Admiral” (Roel Reine).
Luc Besson (“Lucy”) will chair this year’s jury. It will be composed of U.S. filmmaker and screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen (“The Karate Kid”); Hong Kong director and producer Peter Ho-sun Chan (“American Dreams in China”); Russian director Fedor Bondarchuk (“The State Counsellor”); Brazilian director, producer and writer Fernando Meirellles (“City of God”); South Korean director Kim Ki-duk (“One on One”); and Chinese actress Zhou Xun (“Suzhou River”).
The awards to be handed out are best director, feature, actress, actor, supporting actress, supporting actor, cinematography, screenplay, visual effects and music.