21st Oslo Films from the South Festival

A well-organized and very carefully programmed festival, Films from the South is probably the best-attended festival in all of Norway. Taking place in the capital Oslo in the beginning of October, its program is made up of films from Latin America, Asia and Africa. In the different sections films range from the most-awarded of the year (this year that was the case with Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, Ashgar Farhadi’s Nader And Simin: A Separation, and main jury award winner Las Acacias by Pablo Giorgelli) to more commercially based prospects. Several retrospectives also featured, as well as special guests like Eric Khoo (three of his films were shown there, including his last, Tatsumi), Lebanese actress/director Nadine Labaki (her last film Where Do We Go Now? won the Audience Award) and Chilean Matias Bize (The Life Of Fish and two of his older films screened).

Also, starting this year, the festival set up a fund to unite Norwegian producers with filmmakers from the South, helping them to find financing for their new productions in well-attended and organized “pitching sessions”, the results of which we will know during the next few years.

The three-member FIPRESCI jury looked for first and second films in the New Horizons section and gave its main award to the Moroccan film On The Edge (“Sur la planche”) by Leila Kilani, a powerful and intense story about female friends trapped in a conflicting and confusing situation.

Oslo Films from the South Festival: www.filmfrasor.no