NexT International Film Festival
The highlights of this year's edition.
Corina Sabău, 17.05.2014, 14:00
“Short reel can say more than a book of recent history or a newspaper”, said the director of the NexT International Film Festival, Ada Solomon. The long reel After the Night, the debut film of the winner of last year’s edition, Basil da Cunha, opened the festival at the Studio Cinema in the capital. Ada Solomon added: “I believe the public has to be respected, and I believe this is one of the foremost rules among filmmakers: to try to give the audience as much as you can. NexT is about what follows, it means freshness, youth, courage, challenge, each step is a challenge for each of us, and thus we try to offer a variety of recipes, versions for all tastes.”
“It is also a selfish statement, because NexT Festival recharges my batteries, for me it is extraordinary the desire of the filmmakers and young team members to do something so professional. It is the festival that helps you see better what is around you. From the inside, the great revelation for me at this edition is the market of short reel projects and the meetings aimed at working together, held for the first time. 14 projects were submitted. We started from The Pitch, organised by Shorts TV, under which 15 filmmakers presented their projects and made very short films with this aim, their pitches. The audience was invited to vote, and in the end the jury gave out the 5,000 euro award. Starting from that we organised a project market in its own right, where European producers were invited to meet the project makers. We had the joy of having a numerous audience one Sunday morning, and see 14 filmmakers who presented their projects in an extremely creative and convincing way. This show proved to me that things are going well in cinema. When I say I want to offer the public as much as I can, that does not mean that we offer something accessible or easy. We try to change the general perception of cinema, to delight spectators, and not just entertain momentarily.”
The selection committee made up of Irina Trocan and Andrei Rus chose, from among 1,000 festival entries, some of the most provoking short films produced recently, so that the public were delighted to see innovative works and stories from around the world, from UK and France to Kyrgyzstan. Here is Ada Solomon, the director of NexT International Film Festival:
“For several years now we have been receiving around one thousand entries every year, but what matters most is what kind of films they are and who is interested in participating in NexT. A lot of the films submitted for selection here have already gained appreciation in prestigious international competitions, and if they find their participation in our festival important, this means that NexT is indeed important. It means the festival has a good image abroad and people want to be part of it. Another novelty in this year’s edition, and one that I am very proud of, is the national competition. The two critics in our selection committee, Andrei Rus and Irina Trocan, made this national selection whose standards were quite high. Fourteen of the around 100 Romanian entries were selected. They varied a lot in their approach, and ranged from student films to independent films and even projects that have received funding from the National Cinematography Centre. This Romanian showcase, which featured established directors like Adrian Sitaru and Igor Cobileanski, as well as young graduates or directors at their first film, was quite interesting and gave us an idea about the future of the Romanian film industry.”
Here is critic Andrei Rus with more on the productions in the festival:
“They are very different because this is what we wanted: variety. Through this selection we intended to show the viewing public how complex cinematography can be and how many facets it can embrace. We have mainly selected filmmakers who are still searching and questioning things, rather than filmmakers who thing they have all the answers. The films we have selected cannot be easily associated with one particular genre or another but they mostly reflect our choices, Irina Trocan’s and mine. As far as I’m concerned, I prefer a film which has weak points but cannot be easily labelled over a well-made production, but less ambitious. I prefer a film you would see twice to one you see only once and understand everything from the very beginning.”
The festival’s line-up featured some of the best short-reels launched last year in two of the most popular sections: Short Matters and Semaine de la Critique. So NexT Festival has premiered ten short-reels in Bucharest, which ran in Semaine de la Critique section in the Cannes Festival, including the Discovery Award Winner, Daria Belova’s Come and Play. This black & white production features the adventures of a young man who plays with a gun in a forest and passes into another dimension. The 2014 NexT trophy went to an Azeri-German co-production, The Swing of the Coffin Maker directed by Elmar Imanov, a story full of local details that has a universal appeal, a beautifully shot production full of warmth, intimacy and humanity, as the jury has described it.
