Emir Kusturica has announced a new international film festival to be held in his villageDrvengrad at the mountain Mokra Gora in the Southwest of Serbia. The first Kustendorf Film Festival will be held Jan 14-21, organised by Kusturica's production company Rasta Film International and under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of Serbia.

The competition programme consists of 33 films by students of film schools from the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia, UK, US, Cuba, Spain, France and Serbia who will compete for Golden, Silver and Bronze Egg awards. Austrian author Peter Handke, Italian curator Andrea Gambetti from Centro Culturale Edison in Parma and Greek journalist and historian of film Ninos Feneck Mikelidis will serve on the jury.

The non-competition part of the festival includes such festival favourites from 2007 as Cristian Mungiu's Palme d'Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Fatih Akin's Edge of Heaven, Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit, Sam Garbarski's Irina Palm, Cristian Nemescu's California Dreamin' and Kusturica's own Promise Me This. Retrospective programmes will be dedicated to Nikita Mihalkov whose 12 will open the festival, and Russian film, presenting shorts by Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrei Konchalovski and Mihalkov.

Akin, Mungiu, Mihalkov, Kolirin, Rasvan Vasilesku and Michael Radford, whose Il Postino will have a special screening, will hold workshops for the students in competition.

Kusturica is the director of the festival, as well as programme selector.

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