Odesa International Film Festival announces the program

The Odesa Film Festival will present four special programs. The audience will see films from Poland, Iceland, Spain, France, Germany and other countries that tell personal stories about love, family and self-discovery.

This was reported by the press service of the 16th Odesa International Film Festival.

The 16th Odesa International Film Festival has prepared four special programs united by a common theme - a person and his or her choices, memories, fears and hopes. The centerpiece of the program is the films that, through personal dramas, family stories and painful losses, speak about universal things: love and death, the search for home and one's own roots.

The Focus on Poland program was created with the support of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Institute in Kyiv. It presents both classic and new films: from a surreal journey in Wojciech Jerzy Gas's Sanatorium Under the Clepsydra to contemporary films such as Slawomir Fabicki's Fear about farewell and love, and Olga Chaydash's Imago about youth on the eve of change, "A Year in the Life of a Country by Tomasz Wolski about the time of martial law, as well as Property by Dana Modan, Mute Trees by Agnieszka Zwiefka, Forest by Lidia Duda, and Assistant by Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal.

The section "Through Friendly Eyes" focuses on the stories of people who are looking for refuge, new meanings and their own place in the world. Among them are the Icelandic film Temporary Shelter by Anastasia Bortuali, the Danish-Ukrainian film Victor about a boy from Kharkiv who hears the world differently, and Ewan Waddell's The Longer You Bleed, an observation film about the life of Ukrainians in Berlin during the war.

The Family Values: Life program reveals the complexity of family relationships. It will screen the Spanish film Summer in December about women's conflicts and losses, Carlos Marquez-Marceta's They Will Be Ashes about the last journey of lovers, the Czech drama After the Party, the French film Tell Her I Love Her, and the project 8. by Julio Medema, a story of two people through the decades.

The Family Values: Children section focuses on the relationship between parents and children, including the films The Lioness, about a mother looking for her daughter, About Luis, about school bullying and the test of love, and No Instructions Included, about a man who unexpectedly becomes a father. The festival will also screen My Inseparable, the drama After the Summer/Stepmother's Connection, and the Swedish film Lykke After Childbirth, about the fight against postpartum depression.

The festival will take place in Kyiv from September 24 to October 4. The sale of passes started at the end of July. They provide access to premiere screenings of films that have not yet been released in theaters or will remain festival exclusives. The program includes two main competition sections: Ukrainian national and European international, where the best works of Ukrainian and European filmmakers will be presented.

Анна Бальчінос