The new feature film of Academy Award nominated director Tanel Toom "Truth and Justice" has performed strongly in local theatres setting a new record for the opening week of any film shown in Estonia.

Romantic comedy ’Oh, Ramona!’, directed by Cristina Jacob, held on to the Romanian top spot in the second week since its release, thus becoming the highest grossing film in 2019, surpassing US blockbusters such as 'How to Train Your Dragon’, ’Ralph Breaks the Internet’, ’Glass’ and ’Alita: Battle Angel’.

During the 25th anniversary edition, the Sarajevo Film Festival will pay tribute to director Pawel Pawlikowski and honour him for his outstanding contribution to the art of film and his lasting friendship with the city of Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The acclaimed director will be presented with the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award and honoured with a retrospective of his works - including documentaries he made for the BBC and his most recent feature films such as Ida and Cold War - in the Festival’s Tribute to programme. Pawlikowski will be returning to the Sarajevo Film Festival for the third time. In 2010 he presented Ida to the Festival audience and in 2018 Cold War opened the 24th edition of the Festival.

Pawlikowski was born in Warsaw in 1957 and left Poland at the age of fourteen first for the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, before finally settling in the UK in 1977. He studied literature and philosophy in London and Oxford. He started making documentary films for the BBC in the late 1980s. His documentaries, which include From Moscow to Pietushki: A Journey with Benedict Yerofeyev (1990), Dostoevsky’s Travels (1991), Serbian Epics (1992) and Tripping with Zhirinovsky (1995), won numerous international awards including an Emmy and the Prix Italia. In 1998, Pawlikowski moved into fiction with a low budget TV film, Twockers, which was followed by two full-length features, Last Resort (2000) and My Summer of Love (2004), both of which he wrote and directed. Both films won British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards, as well as many others at festivals around the world. After the 2011 film The Woman in the Fifth, Pawlikowski made highly acclaimed Ida which won the 2015 Foreign Language Academy Award, five European Film Academy Awards, a Bafta and a Goya, among many other prizes. Pawlikowski returned to Poland in 2013 while completing Ida. He currently lives in Warsaw and teaches film direction and writing at the Wajda School. Pawlikowski was born in Warsaw in 1957 and left Poland at the age of fourteen first for the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, before finally settling in the UK in 1977. He studied literature and philosophy in London and Oxford. He started making documentary films for the BBC in the late 1980s. His documentaries, which include From Moscow to Pietushki: A Journey with Benedict Yerofeyev (1990), Dostoevsky’s Travels (1991), Serbian Epics (1992) and Tripping with Zhirinovsky (1995), won numerous international awards including an Emmy and the Prix Italia. In 1998, Pawlikowski moved into fiction with a low budget TV film, Twockers, which was followed by two full-length features, Last Resort (2000) and My Summer of Love (2004), both of which he wrote and directed. Both films won British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards, as well as many others at festivals around the world. After the 2011 film The Woman in the Fifth, Pawlikowski made highly acclaimed Ida which won the 2015 Foreign Language Academy Award, five European Film Academy Awards, a Bafta and a Goya, among many other prizes. Pawlikowski returned to Poland in 2013 while completing Ida. He currently lives in Warsaw and teaches film direction and writing at the Wajda School. 
His latest film, Cold War, is a timeless historic romance (inspired by his own parents’ story). It won the Best Director award at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and was the big winner at the 2018 European Film Awards where it picked up the prizes for Best European Film, Director, Screenwriter and Actress (Joanna Kulig). Cold War was recently honored with three Academy Award nominations: in the best foreign-language film, best director and cinematography (Lukasz Zal) categories.
Praised by film critics and loved by audiences, Pawlikowski is an auteur whose films mirror his personal experiences, as well as his ethic values and artistic vision. His films reveal an immense talent, deep understating of historic changes and a strong sense of the interaction between personal and historical. In his own words, Pawlikowski is guided in his work by a desire to find new meaning in what is well-known and already seen.  “For me, that’s the essence of cinema: photographing reality and making it mean more. Not going with the flow as realism is supposed to do, but on the contrary looking at reality against the grain, discovering its strangeness.” (Vertigo, November 2007).
Pawlikowski will be presented with the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo at the opening ceremony of the 25th Sarajevo Film Festival on August 16. ***
Previous honourees of the Sarajevo Film Festival’s Tribute to programme include: Nuri Bilge Ceylan (2018), Joshua Oppenheimer, Oliver Stone (2017), Amat Escalante (2016), Brillante Mendoza, Atom Egoyan (2015), Michael Winterbottom (2014), Cristi Puiu (2013), Todd Solondz (2012), Lucrecia Martel (2011), Bruno Dumont (2010), Jia Zhang-ke (2009), Todd Haynes (2008), Tsai Ming-Liang, Ulrich Seidl (2007), Abel Ferrara,  Béla Tarr (2006), Alexander Payne (2005), Dušan Makavejev, Gaspar Noé (2004), Peter Mullan (2003), Stephen Frears (2002), Mike Leigh (2001), and Steve Buscemi (2000)

Vilnius IFF Kino Pavasaris pays tribute to Claire Denis and Djibril Diop Mambéty

Touki Bouki an adventure drama by Djibril Diop Mambety

The biggest film festival in Lithuania finally revealed its entire line up of 170 films that will be screened over two weeks starting March 21. Vilnius IFF has also turned its attention to one of the greatest modern French cinema directors Claire Denis and Senegalese film director Djibril Diop Mambéty. 

The festival’s renewed team of programmers have introduced the complete programme of the 24^th Vilnius IFF Kino Pavasaris. It is packed with films that stand out in their style and professional skill, have won prizes at Berlin, Sundance, Toronto, Locarno and many more international festivals, as well as those that might have been unjustly overlooked. Selected features will be screened across 5 sections: Festivals’ Favourites, Discoveries, Critics’ Choice, Masters and European Debut Competition.

The festival will screen Hirokazu Koreeda‘s latest audacious drama and winner of the Palme d’Or Shoplifters, Nadine Labaki’s compelling story about anger and neglect Capernaum, Marie Kreutzer's Berlinale Golden Bear contender The Ground Beneath My Feet and Safy Nebbou’s romantic drama starring the brilliant Juliette Binoche Who You Think I Am. Also in this year’s programme is May el-Toukhy’s provocative Queen of Hearts, which examines female passion that’s rarely seen onscreen and was named audience favourite at Sundance, Goteborg and more.

13 films have been selected for the European Debut Competition. It will include two contenders from Lithuanian directors – Marija Kavtaradzė’s Summer Survivors, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, and Aistė Žegulytė’s documentary Animus Animalis (A Story About People, Animals and Things). Also competing for the title of Best European Debut at Vilnius IFF will be last year’s Golden Bear winner by Adina Pintilie Touch Me Not, Richard Billingham’s award-winning Ray & Liz, Cannes Critics’ Week winner Diamantino by Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, and more debut features from Europe. Find the complete European Debut Competition programme here.

This year, the festival is introducing Screen 9 – a special place dedicated to filmgoers wishing to expand their understanding of cinema. Its line-up includes the psychedelic Quantification Trilogy by Berlin-based artist Jeremy Shaw, who will attend the unveiling of Screen 9. The retrospectives of Claire Denis and Djibril Diop Mambéty will also be shown here, as well as films shot on 35mm and various experimental works.

Nine films, including her autobiographical feature debut Chocolat (1988) and her most recent High Life, starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche, will be screened in the Claire Denis retrospective. The Djibril Diop Mambéty retrospective will include the only two feature films created by the innovative and daring Senegalese director: Touki Bouki (1973) and Hyenas (1992).

The festival will also honour the recently departed Lithuanian-American avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas with a special screening of his experimental documentary As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty.

Kirill Serebrennikov’s Summer, a nostalgic ode to the Soviet underground rock scene will open Vilnius IFF.

Find the complete 24^th Vilnius IFF programme here https://kinopavasaris.lt/en/programa

About the festival:

The 24^th Vilnius International Film Festival “Kino Pavasaris” will take place March 21–April 4, 2019. Last year’s festival was visited by 116 551 filmgoers, becoming the largest cinema event in Lithuania and one of the most notable film festivals in Eastern Europe. For more information, visit www.kinopavasaris.lt