Brežice hosts first local festival of European film
Brežice, 28 August - The eastern town of Brežice is hosting for the first time ever the European Film Festival Brežice, a four-day event the organisers hope will become an annual tradition. The festival, which starts tonight, will screen ten features, and the audience will get to pick their favourite.
Brežice
Brežice Castle.
Photo: Rasto Božič/STA
File photo
The films will be screened in the Posavje Museum Brežice, which is located in Brežice Castle, an impressive building dating back to the 16th century.
Keynote speaker at the opening tonight will be National Assembly President Urška Klakočar Zupančič, who grew up near Brežice, in Sevnica, another town located in the Posavje region.
The title of the first film remains a surprise, but the organisers did reveal it has won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
The next three evenings will feature nine films, including Woody Allen's latest feature Coup de chance, his first French-language film.
Other highlights will include Dragan Bjelogrlić's Guardians of the Formula, a film about a secret nuclear programme in the former Yugoslavia gone wrong and a chain reaction it triggers, Quentin Dupieux's The Second Act, a meta-comedy about actors in a doomed film production, and The Old Oak, the latest film by the master of British social realism Ken Loach.
The only fully Slovenian-produced film in the programme will be the road movie hit Gepack, directed by Žiga Kukovič, but Slovenia was also part of the co-production Guardians of the Formula.
The audience darling award will be presented at the Youth Centre Brežice at the end of the festival.
The event is organised by the museum, the local cultural and wine association vKrog, the municipality of Brežice and the local organisation dedicated to entrepreneurship, tourism and youth ZPTM.
They decided to bring in the festival to jazz up the town's summer vibe and add to its cultural events, Brežice deputy mayor Mojca Florjanič told a press conference in July, while Mayor Ivan Molan added that they hoped the event would raise the town's profile and attract more tourists.