The 63rd Locarno International Film Festival will be held from the 4th to the 14th of August. “The Light Thief” - the new film of famous Kyrgyz film-director Aktan Arym Kubat will be shown at Piazza Grande.
It will be the program Open Doors in the frame of this Film Festival. With support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) of the Swiss Foreign Ministry, for the last seven years the Open Doors section has worked to highlight filmmakers and films from countries whose cinema is still developing, and is committed to enabling them to find co-production partners for their new projects.

This initiative, focusing on a different region every year, operates in two modes. Open Doors Factory brings professionals from the chosen region together with potential partners, mostly from Europe, to foster support for projects that would otherwise be difficult to make. Every year, following a call for submissions, the Festival selects a dozen new projects from the chosen region. At the end of the workshop, the winning projects receive either development or production support. For the public audience, the Open Doors Screenings present a selection of key films from the national cinemas of the chosen region.

The Locarno International Film Festival’s co-production lab Open Doors 2010 will focus on countries in central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Organized with support from the Swiss Foreign Ministry’s Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the aim of the Open Doors is to assist the directors and producers of the projects selected to find co-production partners, particularly in Europe, and to be able to make their films. This year the section has a new manager, Martina Malacrida, 32, a graduate in the history and aesthetics of film and a journalist, who has had a long-standing working relationship with the Festival.
Olivier Père, the Festival’s Artistic Director, comments: «The central Asian New Wave, which had its moment of glory in the 1990s, is already long behind us. Today there is a new generation of very young filmmakers, who have come up through short filmmaking or the contemporary visual arts, waiting for a renewal of interest in their countries in the hope that their projects might find European co-production, festival exposure and an audience. In the past, the Locarno Festival has played an essential role in discovering several major auteurs from central Asia, such as Aktan Abdykalykov, Darezhan Omirbayev, Djamshed Usmonov; the forthcoming session of Open Doors will contribute to discoveries that are just as significant».

Open Doors Screenings will run alongside, presenting a series of screenings of earlier work from the directors invited to the workshop, and a selection of films that are representative of recent production in central Asia. A round table on central Asian cinema will bring together producers and filmmakers from the region.

OPEN DOORS SCREENINGS 2010

1) Altyn Khyrgol (My Brother Silk Road) by Marat Sarulu, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, 2001, 80’
2) The Place on the Grey Triangle Hat by Ermek Shinarbayev, Kazakhstan, 1993, 82’
3) Beshkempir (The Adopted Son) by Aktan Arym Kubat, Kyrgyzstan, France, 1998, 81’
4) Angel on the Right by Djamshed Usmonov, Tajikistan, Italy, France, Switzerland, 2002, 88’
5) Kairat, by Darezhan Omirbayev, Kazakhstan, 1991, 72’
6) Kelin (The Daughter-In-Law) by Ermek Tursunov, Kazakhstan, 2009, 84’
7) The Gift to Stalin by Rustem Abdrashev, Kazakhstan, Israel, Poland, Russia, 2008, 97’
8) Povelitel’ much (The Lord of the Flies), by Vladimir Tyulkin, Kazakhstan, 1990, 50’
9) Saratan by Ernest Abdyjaparov, Kyrgyzstan, 2004, 84’
10) Trassa (Highway) by Sergey Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan, France, Germany, 1999, 54’
11) Voiz (Orator) by Yusup Razykov, Uzbekistan, 1998, 83’
12) Yandym (Burned Soul) by Bairam Abdullayev, Lora Stepanskaya, Turkmenistan, 1995, 78’