This year’s The Great 5 line-up, a program featuring current film hits from the five largest European cinemas – Spain, France, Italy, Germany and United Kingdom, includes Youth, a new title by the Italian Oscar winner Paolo Sorrentino. Michael Caine appears as a retired conductor and composer Fred Ballinger, relaxing at an elite Swiss spa with his best friend Mick (Harvey Keitel). Their daily leisure is sprinkled with humorous observations on past, future and present, with an extra touch of an array of eccentric characters from the elite resort: actresses, models, footballers and masseuses. The film stars Rachel Weisz and Paul Dano, with appearances by Jane Fonda, Paloma Faith and Luna Mijović, known for her leading role in Grbavica.
In this section, Germany is represented by the film about a man who could have changed the world if he had only had 13 more minutes. Elser, a new film by Oliver Hirschbiegel, the director who tackled the final days of the Nazi leader in The Downfall, is a story about Georg Elser, a German carpenter who tried to assassinate Hitler on 8 November 1939 in a pub in Munich. Elser did not become famous and celebrated in Germany or globally like, for instance, the other attempted assassinator of the Nazi leader, Claus von Stauffenberg (embodied in one screen version by Tom Cruise). This film will unveil some of the possible reasons why. The Great 5 section is made possible thanks to the network of European Union’s culture institutes in Croatia (EUNIC).
From the very beginning, ZFF’s competitions hosted debut films by some of the greatest celebrity directors like Andrei Zviagintsev, Sofia Coppola, Xavier Dolan, Anton Corbijn and Steve McQueen. ZFF not only likes to discover filmmakers, but it also tries to follow up on their progress. The program Together Again, for the second year round, features five films by the authors whose film have already screened at previous festival editions.
Among ZFF homecomers this year there is Aferim!, the latest film by Romanian director Radu Jude, the two-times ZFF award winner (his first feature debut The Happiest Girl in the World earned him a special mention in 2009, and the humour drama Everybody in Our Family won the 2012 Golden Pram). Aferim! is a western set in 1835 Romania, following a police officer and his son who start chasing a runaway Roma slave to the orders of a local nobleman. Later it becomes clear that the Roma boy did not escape without a reason. Aferim! is the current Romanian Oscar candidate and among the most important award it garnered is a Silver Bear at 2015 Berlinale.
The program includes also Louder than Bombs by Joachim Trier, Norwegian director whose Oslo, 31 August we saw at ZFF 2011. Louder than Bombs is Trier’s first English speaking film, portraying a father (David Byrne) and his two sons (Jesse Eisenberg and Devin Druid) who are facing the feelings related to their late wife and mother, a famous war photographer (Isabelle Huppert).
Check out the trailers: