Instead of Party, we got the Belgrade Film Festival - comments are being made on social networks about the announcement that the capital is getting a film festival, but the veracity of those announcements will come later.
Yes, a new film festival is coming to Belgrade, and it will be held from January 30 to February 6 in the MTS hall. It was initiated by a group of "film lovers, those who have been involved in film for decades, but also young people who are experienced in organizing festivals - I am the oldest among them," he told Vreme. Igor Stankovic, director of MTS hall and Mega Com Film, one of the initiators.
"It will be the first film festival in Belgrade. I don't think there is any reason for Belgrade not to be branded as a film festival, like Berlin, Rotterdam, Sarajevo..."
Igor Stanković explains that the festival will last eight days "because all big festivals last seven to eight days", and that during that time about fifty films will be shown in the MTS hall, as well as in other cinemas.
Mainstream Film Festival
"We will show mainstream titles. Belgrade has several thematically profiled festivals - Autorski, Seven Magnificent, Free Zone, which have no place for mainstream films, and therefore they should be made available to Belgraders," he says.
He notes that the term of the Belgrade Film Festival was chosen so that it "sublimes major world festivals and films nominated for the Oscar, so that we can show the people of Belgrade the most current world film hits."
The idea of the Belgrade Festival is not new. "We have been thinking about it since last year, and it was not initiated by the fact that the Fest will be absent this year," says Stanković.
The Belgrade Film Festival is a private festival, "we are making it without any help from the City Assembly, whose tenders for co-financing projects in culture, as we all know, were absent this year, as well as without the help of the Ministry of Culture, whose tenders were not even implemented until December", says Stanković.
New festival and Fest
Mega Com Film is the largest distribution company in the region, importing films that have been shown at previous Fests for years. City Secretary for Culture Jelena Medaković she recently announced that there will be no Festa this year, but that it should be expected in February, at its usual time.
This July, Miroslav Mogorovic, program director of this year's Fest, said that "the preliminary selection has already been prepared, some attractive films have already been confirmed, and in cooperation with my team of collaborators and colleagues, we will soon complete the program of the upcoming FEST." Given that, one would expect that among those prepared films are those imported by Mega Com Film.
Igor Stanković denies this.
"Not a single MCF film was ever proposed to the Fest, and therefore could not be in the program of this year's edition. This is a new festival, and it has nothing to do with the Fest, nor is it its replacement," says Stanković.
He reminds that the Fest is this year changed the date three times, and that because of this "big cinema films did not reach the audience".
"Now they will be able to see them at the Belgrade Film Festival. It will be a nice start to the year," says Igor Stanković.
Photo: PromoTony Servillo in "La Grazia"
On Monday, December 8, in the MTS hall, a screening of the film "La Grazia" by Paolo Sorrentino is scheduled, as an introduction to the first Belgrade Film Festival. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and its lead actor Toni Servillo won the Cappa Volpi Award for Best Actor.
