Lasting ten days, this annual film meeting provides "an ambitious program with around 200 films, four competitions, retrospectives and tributes", welcomes AFP the Frenchwoman Elise Jalladeau, director general of this organization. for six years.
Eleven films take part in the international competition.
The reward for the first prize, the Golden Alexander, amounts to 10,000 euros, according to the press release from the organizers.
The latest film by American director Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans, already awarded at the Toronto International Film Festival and undoubtedly well placed for the Oscars, marks the opening ceremony Thursday evening at 8:00 p.m. local time (6:00 p.m. GMT).
The French director and actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, will attend the festival for the screening of her latest film "Passengers of the night" by Mikhaël Hers where she plays the leading role as well as the German director Fatih Akin to present his recent film "L'or of the Rhine" (Rheingold).
After two years of pandemic, "the challenges are major for the festival but also for the cinema as an industry", estimates Elise Jalladeau underlining the current stakes of the sector going "from the tsunami of the platforms" to "the concentration" or the " risk of loss of cultural diversity".
"Other challenges are also important to us, including issues of accessibility (...), inclusiveness, representation of women on which we have focused this year," she adds.
A tribute is planned to "two major figures" of the country's industry Maria Plyta, the first Greek female director (1915-2006) and Maria Gavala, author and theorist of the seventh art, according to Elise Jalladeau.
To mark "the return to normal", the festival chose as its main theme this year, in tribute to the Greek director Théo Angelopoulos who died 10 years ago, the title of his first film the "Reconstitution" (1970).
“We are now seeing the fruits of this reconstruction operation with a + normal + festival for the public, with lightened health protocols and a mass return of spectators to theaters”, summarizes Elise Jalladeau.
© 2022 AFP