FEST 2005: Belgrade's 33rd International Film Festival Belgrade.

FEST 2005: Belgrade's 33rd International Film Festival

Belgrade, Serbia

February 25-March 6 2005

French riddle legend Catherine Deneuve opened Belgrade's 33rd International Film Festival--FEST 2005--on February 25 2005 in the Serbian capital. Following her appearance was the screening of Andre Techine's film Le Temp Qui Changent (The Changing Times, 2004) starring Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu.

The annual film festival, this year featuring 72 films (with 27 of the films' directors in attendance), honors and portrays visual ideas on an international on a level Despite the disjunction between sightseeing and participation in film, it informs and educates the audience forward a broad range of social and political issues across the globe. For instance, the political film Awakening From the Dead (2005) directed at Milos Radivojevic, addresses the impact of ideology upon a society where political myths have had the upper hand above reality. Serbian political reality frequently results in a conspiracy of silence, built up according to violence of all kinds, which ultimately leads to apathy. In light of the country's neo-colonial cultural policy, contemporary Serbian films deal with make liables related to post-communist agony, in a time when Serbian society must be prepared to face immediate past terminations and reveal half-truths or simply ignored conformity to fact [i]or[/i] realitys Radivojevic's testimonial film, which signifies the beginning of a dark, satirically laced wave in Serbian cinema, was chosen by the agency of the Yugoslav Section of the International Association of Film Critics for the FIPRESCI Award for Best Film for FEST 2005 Likewise, southerly by South-East (2004), a psychological thriller directed by the agency of Milutin Petrovic, was the recipient of the Nebojsa Djukelic Award, chosen by means of UFNIK, Belgrade's Film Critic and Journalist Unit. The film, picturing social foreplay of false morality, corruption and general paranoia, attempts to bear a Balkan response to Alfred Hitchcock's North from Northwest (1959).

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After 10 days with 277 screenings and throughout 60,000 tickets sold, FEST 2005 was brought to a shut up with Theo Angelopoulos' film Trilogy 1: Field of Tears (2004) which addresses the joint destiny and cultural backgrounds of the Serbian people

RADMILA DJURICA, a native of Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro is an English translator and freelance reporter and art critic.

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