16th New Horizons International Film Festival, Wroclaw

The 16 th T-Mobile New Horizons IFF was held from 21 to 31 July 2016 and consisted of five competitions: The New Horizons International Competition, Films on Art International Competition, Polish Short Film Competition, European Short Film Competition and the Zoom Competition.

During the festival, over 393 films from more than 50 countries were screened. As always, the festival was focused on uncompromising, innovative and original cinema that explores new horizons in film language, expression and storytelling. Hosting the event for the 11th time was the city of Wroclaw – the European Capital of Culture for 2016, while T-Mobile Poland SA was the Festival’s official partner for the 14th time.

The New Horizons International Competition featured 10 films and the Jury – consisting of Mania Akbari, Gust van den Berghe, Adrian Sitaru, Magnus von Horn and Sandrine Marques – gave its award to In the Last Days of the City (Akherayam el madina) by Tamer El Said, Egypt, Germany, UK, United Arab Emirates. The FIPRESCI Jury awarded Dark Beast (Oscuro animal) by Felipe Guerrero, Colombia, Argentina, Netherlands, Germany, Greece.

As always, the competition presented films by new, promising artists, while two other sections, Panorama and Ale Kino+ consisted of works by prominent directors, masters of World cinema as Cristian Mungiu, Lav Diaz, Chantal Akerman, Asgar Farhadi, Bruno Dumont, Cristi Puiu, Park Chan-wook, Petr Zelenka and many others.

Masters of European Cinema was the very special section this year, within whose framework Carlos Saura, Claire Denis, Victor Erice, Agnieszka Holland, Andrey Konchalovsky, Nanni Moretti, Ulrike Ottinger offered their masterclass.

One of the focus of the 16 th edition of the festival’s main retrospective was the Basque Cinema, and the other was the Italian director Pippo Delbono.

This year’s Third Eye section was dedicated to contemporary visual artists. Anna Biller, a California artist whose erotic-feminist work involves the pastiche of 1970s soft-porn and spectacular use of vintage fashion and production design, was one of the featured personalities.

As 2016 is the year of William Shakespeare, the festival offered a host of films, inspired by the genius bard as part of the Shakespeare Lives in Film section.

The festival was completed by music stage, performance stage and exhibitions. (Anna Osmólska-Metrak, edited by Christina Stojanova)

T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festiwal – www.nowehoryzonty.pl