Festival du nouveau cinéma will screen latest from Von Trier, Almodovar, Wenders and Sarah Polley

MONTREAL - New films by Lars von Trier, Pedro Almodóvar and Wim Wenders are on the menu at the 40th Festival du nouveau cinéma (FNC), Oct. 12 to 23. As usual, Montreal’s most discerning film festival culls the best of the year’s international film fest circuit to offer 292 movies from 45 countries, including 11 world premieres, 23 North American premieres and 10 Canadian premieres.
Von Trier’s Melancholia stars Kirsten Dunst, Kiefer Sutherland and Charlotte Gainsbourg in a drama about the end of the world; Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito) is a thriller featuring Antonio Banderas as a depraved plastic surgeon; and Wenders’s Pina is a 3-D dance film tribute to late German choreographer Pina Bausch.

Melancholia

The above films will screen in the Special Presentation section alongside the works of 22 other established directors, including Alexander Sokurov’s Faust (Russia; recent winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival); Almayer’s Folly, by Chantal Akerman (Belgium-France); Davis Guggenheim’s U2 documentary From the Sky Down (U.S.); Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo II (Canada); Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz (starring Seth Rogen, Michelle Williams and Sarah Silverman); Paule Baillargeon’s 30 Tableaux (Quebec) and Asghar Farhadi’s
A Separation (Iran).
The International Selection features films in competition for the FNC’s Louve d’Or, including Quebec director Anne Émond’s feature debut Nuit #1 (recent winner of a special mention from the jury at the Toronto International Film Festival); Steve McQueen’s buzz-riding sex-addict odyssey Shame; Miaoyan Zhang’s Black Blood (China); Matias Meyer’s The Last Christeros (Mexico-Netherlands); Tolga Karacelik’s Toll Booth (Turkey) and Argyris Papadimitropoulos’s Wasted Youth (Greece).
The International Panorama section offers a varied batch of movies from around the globe, including Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba’s Chico & Rita, an animated film about a jazz-musician couple in ’50s Cuba; Fabiano De Souza’s Last Road to the Beach (Brazil) and Tobias Wyss’s Flying Home (Switzerland).
Groundbreaking and controversial films are on display in the Temps Ø section, including works by three Japanese directors: Sion Sono’s psychosexual, neo-feminist punk thriller Guilty of Romance; Takashi Miike’s 3-D adventure Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai; and Shinya Tsukamoto’s Kotoko (winner of the Orizzonti prize at the Venice Film Festival).
Other notable Temps Ø submissions: Our Day Will Come, by Romain Gavras (the French director of provocative music videos for M.I.A. and Justice); Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty (Australia); the world premiere of Assassin’s Creed: Embers, an animated film linked to the popular Ubisoft video game; New York experimental cinema star Marie Losier’s The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye; Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter (winner of the Cannes Critics Week Grand Prix) and Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy, dubbed the first 3-D porn film, by Christopher Sun Lap Key (Hong Kong).
The Focus series screens Canadian films, including Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks’s NFB doc Surviving Progress; Ivan Grbovic’s Romeo Eleven and Rasta, A Soul’s Journey by Donisha Prendergast, granddaughter of Bob Marley.
For its 40th edition, the festival is holding a special Cartes blanches series, in which it asked 10 filmmakers who have shown works at the fest in the past to direct a short film (maximum four minutes) in HD. Participants include Denis Côté, Sophie Deraspe, Zacharias Kunuk, Catherine Martin, Bruce McDonald, Marie Losier and Denis Villeneuve.
As previously announced, the fest’s opening film is Valérie Donzelli’s Declaration of War and the closing film is Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar, Canada’s official Oscar submission for best foreign-language film.
Short films screening at the fest include works by Spike Jonze, Harmony Korine and the Brothers Quay; and by Quebec directors Pedro Pires (who has done visuals for Cirque du Soleil) and Nicolas Roy (whose Ce n’est rien was in competition at Cannes).
The FNC will also feature retrospectives on directors Amos Gitai (Israel) and Asghar Farhadi (Iran).
The Festival du nouveau cinéma runs from Oct. 12 to 23. Tickets go on sale Oct. 8. The Passe: FNC, which grants access to all movies except the opening and closing films, is on sale for $100 (regular price $125) until Oct. 5 at lavitrine.com.