The Seventh Küstendorf International Film and Music Festival (also known as Emir Kusturica’s festival) came to a close last night with the Awards ceremony. After comments on the larger-than-life nature of films and that auteur cinema and indie films have a bright future, awards were handed out. The Bronze Egg Award went to Luka Popadić for Baits & Hooks, the Silver Egg was given to Julia Kolberger for The Easter Crumble, and Andrej Kolencik and Peter Beganyi received the Golden Egg Award for The Exhibition. Emir Kusturica then, in a short speech, summed up the festival, noting that this year’s Küstendorf linked the past, the present and the future of film through its three programs. After this, he invited the Serbian minister of culture, Ivan Tasovac, to officially close the festival.
The three aforementioned programmes were the following:
The Competition Program that was made up of films competing for the three Eggs: After the Winter by Jow Zhi Wei, Arena by Martin Rath, Baits and Hooks by Luka Popadić, Exile by Vladilen Vierny, Grand Canal by Johnny Ma, How I Killed Rabin by Michael Aialu, Made in Chinatown by Kevin Lau, More Than Two Hours by Ali Asgari, Our bad Winter by Grzegorz Zariczny, Perfidia (Gloom) by David Figueroa García, Sweet Corn by Joo Hyun Lee, The Easter Crumble by Julia Kolberger, The Exhibition by Andrej Kolencik and Peter Beganyi, The Last Veil by Luis Palomino and Tightrope by Wu Linfeng.
The American New Wave Program that included the following classics of the genre: Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?; Kenneth Bowser’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls; Soldier Blue by Ralph Nelson, Five Easy Pieces by Bob Rafelson and Bob Fosse’s Cabaret.
The Contemporary Trends Program that presented the best of the current trends in world cinema with films such as Asghar Farhadi’s The Past, Miss Violence by Alexandros Avranas, Broken Night by Guillermo Arriaga, Yuri Bykov’s The Major, The Great Beauty by Paolo Sorrentino and François Ozon’s Young and Beautiful.
There was also a small section dedicated to new authors and it included three films: Little Budo (work in progress) by Danilo Bećković, Kosma by Sonja Blagojević and Dragan Wende by Lena Müller, Dragan von Petrović and Vuk Maksimović.
The jury was made up of the French actress Bérénice Bejo (president), the Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Arriaga and the Serbian filmmaker Srđan Koljević.
We also have to mention that the seventh edition of the Küstendorf International Film and Music Festival opened on 18 January in a rather unusual way: with a reconstruction of the Sarajevo Assassination which ended with Gavrilo Princip’s famous gunshot that triggered fireworks. The festival also featured music performances by the French singer Zaz and Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Orchestra. The fest ran from 18 to 23 January 2014.
Source and photo: the official webpage of the Küstendorf Film and Music Festival.
