Focus Norway on the 10th edition of Ceau, Cinema! Festival

Jun 23, 2023 | Episode 10

The 10th edition of Ceau, Cinema! Festival from Timişoara will celebrate Norwegian cinema through a focus organized in collaboration with Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF). The section will include a cine-concert with a masterpiece of silent cinema, a series of new and classical films, and also meetings with Norwegian filmmakers and experts.

As a preview to the Focus on Norway, Ceau, Cinema!preparedfor June 30th a special screening of ”Sick of Myself”, 2022, directed by Kristoffer Borgli and shown last year within Un Certain Regard section of Cannes Festival. The film follows a young woman who creates herself a new personality and who goes all length in order to get herself noticed and to draw others’ compassion, when the artistic career of her lover, that she competes with, takes off. The screening is organized in collaboration with Cinema Victoria from Timişoara and the film distributor in Romania, CAY Films, the tickets being available on Eventbook.

The festival will open on July 12th with a cine-concert in the Capitol Hall of Banatul Philharmonic. A well-known musician from Timișoara, Petre Ionuţescu will provide the live soundtrack especially designed for the film ”The Bridal Party in Hardanger”, 1926, directed by Rasmus Breistein, considered a silent masterpiece of Norwegian cinema. Presented in a restored version, the film tells a tragic love story, which occurs in a spectacular landscape of mountains and fjords.

Another great heritage film included in the focus and also presented in a restored version is ”The Wayward Girl”, 1959, about a young couple who runs away from the crowded world and searches for refuge in a cabin in the woods, where their relation is challenged by the arrival of a stranger. It is the latest feature film of the most popular Norwegian female director, Edith Carlmar, and also the film which launched Liv Ullmann, at her first role by that time. After the screening, Kjell Runar Jenssen, expert within the Cinematheque of Oslo, will held a masterclass on Norwegian cinema.

As for the new cinema, the section proposes five films, among which one for children, and discussions with two female filmmakers invited in the festival.

The young director Franciska Eliassen will come to Ceau, Cinema! in order to show her debut, ”Sister, What Grows Where Land Is Sick?”, 2022, winner of a special mention within Cineasti del presente section of Locarno Film Festival. The film follows the special relation between two sisters, in a world menaced by dangers.

Another filmmaker coming to Timişoara will be Itonje Søimer Guttormsen. Her debut film, ”Gritt” (2021), follows a female artist who is in search of an artistic vision. Undeterred by the lack of support, she engages in a mission to bury capitalism and patriarchate. 

In the last night of the festival, on July 16th, at Capitol Open Air, will be screened ”Munch” (2023, directed by Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken), a strong biographic film about the famous painter Edvard Munch and which opened this year’s edition of Rotterdam Festival.

The section also includes the documentary”The Eclipse”, 2022, of the Serbian director Nataša Urban, who’s been living for several years in Norway. The filmmaker uses as a metaphor the sun eclipse from 1999 in order to question the Serbian nation’s consciousness regarding the consequences of its political choices.

The focus features a film for children as well, ”Sisters: The Summer We Found Our Superpowers, 2020, by Arild Østin Ommundsen and Silje Salomonsen. Two sisters set for an epic trip through the Norwegian wilderness in order to find help for their father, who fell into a rift in the mountains.

The section is organized in collaboration with Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF), the biggest film festival in Norway, launched in 2000.

More details are available on ceaucinema.ro, and on the festival Facebook and Instagram profiles.

Focus Norway is part of the project “See you at the cinema?! – The role of arthouse cinemas and film festivals in the age of online platforms”, funded by EEA and Norwegian Grants.

Ceau, Cinema! Festival is dedicated to European cinema, it is organized by the Association Pelicula Culturală and founded together with the Association Marele Ecran. The 10th edition of the festival will take place during July 12th – 16th in Timişoara

The project is part of the National Cultural Programme „Timișoara–European Capital of Culture in 2023” and is funded through the programme European Echoes, conducted by the Center for Projects Timișoara, with amounts allotted from the state budget, through the Ministry of Culture budget.

Sponsors: Vitas Romania, Groupama Insurance.

Funded by: the Romanian Film Center.

Partners: Marele Ecran Association, Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF), the German Cultural Center from Timişoara, the Austrian Cultural Forum Bucharest, the Polish Institute Bucharest, the Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Center Bucharest, the Czech Center Bucharest, the Embassy of Spain, Cervantes Institute from Bucharest, the Italian Cultural Institute from Bucharest, the French Institute from Timișoara, the French Institute from Bucharest.

With the support of: Ceva de Spus Association, Cartea Călătoare Foundation, Cinema Victoria, Animest, Ibis Timisoara City Center, TAZZ, Faber, Timişoara la cutie, The House of Arts– the County Direction for Culture Timiş, Claudia Roşu.

Media partners: All about Romanian Cinema (AaRC), West City Radio, Ziarul Metropolis.