The cold and damp weather that set in Bratislava yesterday makes for a perfect invitation to spend your free time in a cinema theatre; here, you can tuck in a comfy armchair, forget the wind and the rain and identify with joys and problems of on-screen characters just like Mia Farrow did in the Purple Rose of Cairo. To help you fit your mood to the perfect film, here are a couple of tips for today.
At 13.45, Kino Lumiére (K1) will show Sparrows, a competitive fiction film that has been placed in the “Europa” section. The second fiction feature by Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson, this is a visually compelling film about a journey from innocence to adulthood, about love in the time of adolescence and about mending a father-and-son relationship that has broken down. The main character, a 16-year-old boy Ari, must move away from his mother and spend the summer with his father who does not show much interest in him. He is forced to abandon his comfortable and happy urban life in Reykjavík and exchange it for the remote backwater of Westfjords area. The film won the Golden Seashell award at the 63rd edition of San Sebastián IFF.
At 16.00, Kino Mladosť will screen Three Days in September (Tri dena vo septemvri) by Macedonian director Darijan Pejovski who visited our festival in person. His fiction debut tells a story of two completely different women that are brought together by destiny to help each other come to terms with their pasts. After Marika, a prostitute, kills a man in self-defence, she runs off to the nearby station and boards a train where she meets Jana, a quiet woman in her late thirties who is on her way to her cottage deep in the mountains. This is a perfect opportunity for Marika to take refuge; or so it seems…
At 18.15, Kino Mladosť will hold a charity projection of He Named Me Malala, the latest documentary by American Academy Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, 2006) inspired by the powerful life story of Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani teenager and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history who was severely wounded by the Taliban at the age of 15 for advocating education for girls. Despite being under constant death threat, Malala shows admirable enthusiasm and endeavour aimed at helping others. By buying tickets for this projection, you helped raise extra funds for the RED NOSE Clowndoctors civic association, which operates a network of health clowns who support mental well-being of hospitalised children and senior citizens through humour and personal approach, thus helping their overall health condition. Unfortunately, if you have not bought the tickets already, you can only hope for no-shows as the screening sold out a long time ago.
At 19.00, Kino Nostalgia offers you One Floor Below (Un etaj mai jos), a powerful story by Romanian director Radu Muntean who earned his spurs directing advertising spots that brought him more than 40 awards at national and international festivals. For his fiction debut, The Rage (Furia, 2002), he won the Best Debut Film award at the Transylvania Film Festival in 2003. Since then, he has become a leading representative of the Romanian new wave. His latest picture is about frustration and disorientation of a middle-aged man who struggles with his conscience. He has lived a completely ordinary life – working, taking care of his son and spending his free time with his dog – until today when he became the witness to a conflict in the neighbouring apartment that resulted in murder.
If you prefer the pleasant and intimate atmosphere of our festival lounge, you are more than welcome to stop by at Gorila.sk Urban Space and its 21.00 projection of Joel Silberg’s cult dance movie Breakin’ (1984) from the Nostalgia: VHS Stories section. The film will take you 30 years back in time when a new style of street dance took downtowns of all American cities by storm… Yes, it was break dance and if you feel like breakin’, maybe you can ask Stroon who will kick off his DJ set right after the projection, i.e. at around 22.30.
