Five years after Cristian Mungiu and Thierry Frémaux, the General Delegate of Cannes Film Festival, had the idea, during the European Film Week in Buenos Aires, to organize Les Films de Cannes á Bucarest Festival, the event relaunches in the Argentinian capital under the name of Semana de Cine del Festival de Cannes.
The first edition will take place between 1 and 7 December, 2014, in the presence of the same guests who visited the fifth edition of Les Films de Cannes á Bucarest Festival on October, 2014: Bérénice Bejo and Michel Hazanavicius.
„ But the Cannes Festival may not now stop at Buenos Aires, or Bucharest, where a similar event has taken place since 2010” says „Variety”. „ We have projects to bring films all over the world. Cristian Mungiu is already organizing a showcase in Bucharest. It’s not so important for us as for the films. We are looking at territories where it would be beneficial to have a Cannes presence”, said Thierry Frémaux, the selector of the films to be screened during Semana de Cine del Festival de Cannes.
The European Film Week was initiated in 2009 by Cannes Film Festival and INCAA, the Argentinian Film Agency, along with Ventana Sur, the largest South-American film market.
In addition to this, the organizers wanted to have a focus on European film as well, in the presence of the authors. In the first edition, one of the special guests was director Cristian Mungiu. Six editions later, as the event was no longer funded by the EU, it became possible to include non-European films as well, and Frémaux took over the model from Bucharest to re-brand it in Argentine.
Semana de Cine del Festival de Cannes maintains the same idea, that a festival is more than films, it implies several events, guests, debates – all contributing to the diversity in cinema.
Michel Hazanavicius and Bérénice Bejo will host master-classes, while Thierry Frémaux will be talking about how Cannes Festival works for South-American industry, under the name „Look Who’s Talking”.
Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest (24 – 30 October), initiated by Cristian Mungiu, presented this year around 30 titles of Cannes’ Official Selection, organized a Bertrand Tavernier Retrospective, in the presence of the author, and had Michel Hazanavicius, Bérénice Bejo, Jacqueline Bisset, Sergei Loznitsa and Radu Mihăileanu as special guests.
„ The question now is if Cannes will add other events to its mission of backing the world’s film industry”, concludes „Variety”.