Films from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan will be showcased at this year's Trieste Film Festival - Alpe Adria Cinema (January 16-23, 2003) which has become an important meeting place for cinema from Central and Eastern Europe since its launch in 1988.

The festival's 'Cinema of the Silk Road' showcase is part of a biennial project dedicated to cinema of the Central Asian republics and will be continued in 2004 with films from Turkmenistan and Tajikistan as well as a retrospective of Central Asia cinema from before the end of the Soviet Union.

In addition to staging international feature and short film competitions, the Trieste festival will also present a 'one-man show' dedicated to the controversial Polish director Andrzej Zulawski, screening all of his 12 feature films from The Third Part Of The Night (1972) through Possession (1981) to his latest La Fidelite (2000).