From this Friday, October 4 and until October 9, films from around the world are coming to Berck-sur-Mer for the 20th edition of the “Cinémondes” international independent film festival. This year, carte blanche to Finnish director Aki Kaurimaki and Ariane Ascaride as guest of honor.
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It is a festival on a human scale which has been part of the cultural landscape of the region for 20 years. Here, no glitter, no red carpet but a requirement on the choice of films presented and the proximity between the public and the invited directors.
Dominique Olier, general delegate of the international independent film festival “Cinémondes”, presents the highlights of this 20th edition.
We wanted it to be an edition that left its mark on the teams and the public, but always anchored in our editorial line, namely: to discover contemporary films, heritage films, unreleased films from all over the world and to have major filmmakers. .
It is for this reason that we decided to bring the Finnish director Aki Kaurimäki, Grand Jury Prize winner in 2002 at the Cannes Film Festival for “The Man Without a Past“. He suggested that we bring two other European filmmakers who are his friends: Victor Erice, the Spanish director of “The hive mind“, a film from the 70s which is one of the great classics of Spanish cinema and the Portuguese Pedro Costa, a filmmaker between fiction and documentary, who has worked extensively on the Cape Verdean community of Lisbon.
Nine films from their filmography will be offered during “Cinémondes“, dont “Close your eyes” by Victor Erice, presented at the last Cannes festival, and screened on opening night this Friday at 7 p.m.
We are not just a broadcaster. We attach a lot of importance to always having a fairly long time for discussion with the public, after the screenings. And it’s not a host who asks questions to the guest. We spread the word with the public and that is extremely important.
Aki Kaurimäki will be present at almost all screenings. Sunday, at 3 p.m., after the screening of his film “The match girl“, a “cross chat” will be organized during which the three directors will talk about the cinema of others and the moments that marked them.
From October 6 to 8, the actress will be in Berck where she will accompany a program of her choice. She will premiere her brand new film “The Thieving Magpie” by Robert Guédiguian.
Ariane Ascaride, guest of honor at the 20th edition of Cinémondes
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© Léa Crespi
We have a tight program of 65 films. This allows us to have a look at cinematographies that we are not used to seeing in theaters: we are going to have a Cape Verdean filmmaker, last year we received a Mauritian director. These are countries where there is cinema, fiction or documentary, but we know little about it. The idea is to let people discover it for a few days. This is also a festival: seeing things that you don’t see elsewhere.
We attach a lot of importance to emerging creation. We therefore have a competition of 15 short films and we have a production forum section which brings together 24 young authors from Hauts-de-France and Belgium, in the process of writing their project and we put them in touch with producers ,broadcasters, television channels. These are perhaps films that we will see here in two or three years.
