'Taxi', 'Tikkun', 'The Lobster' make Sarajevo Kinoscope cut

The Sarajevo Film Festival’s (Aug 14-22) non-competitive strand Kinoscope will feature 19 films, 12 of which come from first or second-time feature directors.

The eclectic selection includes festival favourites such as Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, Andrew Haig’s 45 Years, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster, Martti Helde’s In The Crosswind, Ciro Guerra’s Embrace Of The Serpent, and Jerusalem Film Festival winner Tikkun.

Also featured are documentaries Killing Time by Lydie Wisshaupt-Claudel, Chad Gracia’s The Russian Woodpecker, and Benedikt Erlingsson’s archive footage collage The Greatest Shows On Earth: A Century Of Vaudeville, Circuses And Carnivals.

Genre fare is represented by Green Room, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, and Takashi Miike’s Yakuza Apocalypse.

The strand’s programmers, Protagonist Pictures’ CEO Mike Goodridge and Festivalscope’s Alessandro Raja and Mathilde Henrot, said: “In programming Kinoscope this year, we found ourselves unconsciously veering towards work from young new film-makers. We only realized this when the programme was complete – 12 out of the 19 features are from first- and second-time directors – but perhaps the nature of a festival programmer is to be surprised and delighted by fresh visions and new voices, so in retrospect it’s perhaps not that much of a shock. That’s not to say that we haven’t included some of the world’s most celebrated names.”

A full list of titles can be found here.

Tribute to Brillante Mendoza

Sarajevo Film Festival’s perennial Tribute To programme will this year focus on Filipino director Brillante Mendoza.

Sarajevo will show ten of his 16 films, with the director in attendance, starting with Masahista, winner of Golden Leopard for best video art at Locarno 2005, through Cannes titles Serbis  and Kinatay (for which he won Best Director Award in 2009).

The retrospective will close with Taklub, winner of the Special Mention from the Ecumenical Jury in this year’s Cannes Un Certain Regard.

In previous years, Sarajevo has paid tribute to film-makers such as Michael Winterbottom, Cristi Puiu, Todd Solondz, Lucrecia Martel, Bruno Dumont, Jia Zhang-ke, Todd Haynes, Abel Ferrara, and Béla Tarr.