Cinepécs Film Festival

Another great line-up of films for the last two days of this festival.  I saw five films in a row on Saturday.  Wow, what a marathon.  With a quick stop for a bowl of bean goulash and a beer in a nearby cellar restaurant between films.  It’s hard to pick a favorite film.  I loved the film Belgrade Phantom – a hybrid documentary/drama.  Interviews with witnesses to the events were effectively woven together with a dramatization of the story of a young man, during the Tito regime in Yugoslavia, who stole a white Porsche and drove around the central city square in Belgrade evading police night after night.  He becomes a folk hero as people crowd the square to see him each night, while the police become increasingly desperate to stop him. I also liked the Croatian film Land of Wonders with a cast of characters all damaged by the war in different ways.  The Romanian film, The Other Irene, was a tale of a man’s search to find out the truth behind his wife’s death, fighting an unsympathetic bureaucracy.  This film won the top prize at the fest.  Sunday I went to four screenings, including 3 short documentaries about the gypsies that were in Hungarian with no subtitles unfortunately for me.  There was fascinating documentary called the Political Economy of Capitalism that followed 6 workers who formed a company together.  It was sad, brutal tale of one man’s eventual take-over of the company from his former co-workers and partners.  That evening the festival organizers closed a traffic tunnel, put up two big screens and projected an Emir Kustirica’s film (Time of the Gypsies).  They had food and drink followed by the awards ceremony in the tunnel.  There’s a picture of the tunnel events below. A very cool ending to the festival.   I believe I saw 15 screenings during the 4 day fest.  Hope to bring some of these films to the Kansas International Film Festival next year to a U.S. audience.