Polish genre festival unveils line-up

Tsui Hark’s second 3D film Young Detective Dee: Rise Of The Sea Dragon, will receive its European premiere at Poland’s first international genre film festival, to be held in Warsaw from Dec 6-12.

Tsui’s film, which has taken $73m in China this year, will be shown at the six-day Black Bear Filmfest, which is being organised by Polish-born Artur Brzozowski and Tom Lukaszewicz in cooperation with the Arteria Foundation.

The festival will open with Belgian director Vincent Lanoo’s In The Name Of The Son (Au nom du fils), with director Lanoo and his lead actress Asstrid Whettnall confirmed as attending the screening. Lanoo’s film recently won the Méliès Award at the Sitges Film Festival.

Jim Mackle’s We Are What We Are, a remake of Jorge Michel Grau’s 2010 film, will be the closing film.

Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily, Brzozowski revealed that all but one of the 22 feature films screening at the Kinoteka arthouse multiplex - one of the main venues of the Warsaw Filmfest - will be Polish premieres.

Titles confirmed so far include Kevin King’s Zombie Hunter, Oriol Paulo’s The Body (El Cuerpo), Marvin Kren’s The Station (Blutgletscher), Jeremy Gardner’s The Battery, Joe Begos’ Almost Human, Fernando Cortizo’s O’ Apistolo and Peter Bebjak’s Slovakian horror found footage film Evil (Zlo).

In addition, there will be a screening for children of the Uruguayan fantasy film Anina by Alfredo Soderguit, and three programmes of genre shorts: two Get Shorty compilations of international titles such as Death Of A Shadow, Perfect Drug and Abiogenesis, and Krotkie Szorty dedicated exclusively to local Polish productions.

The Black Bear Filmfest, not to be confused with the Black Bear Film Festival in Milford/Pennsylvania, has been inspired and supported by the Fantasy Filmfest which has become the largest genre film festival in Germany since its founding in 1987.

Brzozowski has worked for the Fantasy Filmfest for more than 10 years, initially as a freelancer and now as the festival’s technical manager and one of its programmers, while Lukaszewicz has been connected with the event as a freelancer for the past five years.

In the spring of 2011, the two came up with the idea of expanding the concept of the Fantasy Filmfest to their home country. They are also planning a series of cultural events, workshops, get-togethers and lectures to accompany the film programme.

Turkish horror set for Germany release

German exhibitor-distributor Kinostar has scored a first this Halloween by releasing Arkin Aktac’s hit Turkish horror film Seytan-I Racim theatrically in Germany in the slot occupied in past years often by the various instalments of the Scream and Saw franchises.

The film, which has so far taken over $1m at the Turkish box office, opened yesterday (Oct 31) in multiplexes throughout Germany in such cities as Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Dortmund, Stuttgart and Nuremberg.

Kinostar’s distribution operations place particular emphasis on the release of Turkish films in Germany.

The next releases are the comedy Hükümet Kadin 2 (Nov 7) and the action thriller Behzat C Ankara Yaniyar (Nov 14).