Three Rotterdam-backed films awarded in Cannes

International Film Festival Rotterdam

PRESS RELEASE 28 May 2012

Three Rotterdam-backed films awarded in Cannes

For his Post Tenebras Lux, launched internationally as project at CineMart 2011, Carlos Reygadas has been awarded Best Director of the 65th Film Festival de Cannes.
Sergei Loznitsa’s In the Fog, also launched at CineMart and competing in Cannes, was awarded by FIPRESCI, the international federation of film critics.
Los Salvajes, a Hubert Bals Fund-supported first film by Alejandros Fadel selected in the Semaine de la Critique, took the ACID/CCAS Award for distribution support.
In total, six films in various Cannes sections were backed by the IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund or were launched at Rotterdam’s CineMart.

Over the past ten years, the IFFR has supported and screened several works of filmmaker, producer and screenwriter Carlos Reygadas (1971, Mexico). He started making short films in 1998, after studying International Law in Mexico and London. In 2001, IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund provided post-production support for his first feature Japón, that saw its world premiere in IFFR 2002. His full-length films received several nominations and awards at international festivals: Battle in Heaven (2005) and Silent Light (2007) were nominated for the Golden Palm in Cannes. Silent Light won the jury prize in Cannes 2007. In 2009, Reygadas made Serenghetti, an installation work commissioned by the IFFR for its Urban Screen Project. He returned to Rotterdam in 2011 to present his project Post Tenebras Lux at CineMart. The film saw its world premiere in Cannes Competition 2012.

Filmmaker and screenwriter Sergei Loznitsa (1964, Belarus) studied in Kiev. He completed three films in Russia before moving to Germany in 2001. After making several documentary films, he received a grant of the Hubert Bals Fund in 2006 to develop the script of his first fiction feature My Joy. The same year, he presented the world premiere of his medium-length found-footage film The Blockade in Rotterdam’s Shorts section. In 2008, he was back in Rotterdam for the premiere of The Revue, a feature length film again comprised solely of newsreel footage.
Meanwhile, My Joy was selected for CineMart 2007 and premiered in Cannes’ Competition in 2010. A year later, Loznitsa’s project In the Fog, his second fiction feature based on a novel by Wassil Bykau, was selected for CineMart 2011. Now finished, the film sees its world premiere in Cannes’ Competition 2012.

Alejandro Fadel (1981, Argentina) was educated at Universidad del Cine where he developed his first short films. He also directed video clips and was co-director of the feature film El amor - primera parte (2003). In 2004 he started to develop his career as a writer for film and television. His first own feature Los Salvajes (The Wild Ones) received a grant from IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund for post-production and final financing in 2011. The film was selected for BAFICI’s International Competition and will see its international premiere in the Cannes film festival’s independent sidebar Semaine de la Critique.

(End of press release)

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