French director wins "Crossing Europe" award for second time

French director and actress Isild Le Besco has won the European Competition for the second time and receives the CROSSING EUROPE Award European Competition 2008 for her film "Charly. The jury in Linz (Austria) called Le Besco an “original voice in European cinema” and added that “this simple ‘coming-of-age’ story lingered disturbingly in our minds due to its uncompromising style and great acting.”

Greek director Thanos Anastopoulos received a special mention for "Diorthosi/Correction". The Ray Audience Award went to "Ljubav i Drugi Zlocini/Love and Other Crimes" by Stefan Arsenijevic.

Michael Haneke replays "Funny Games"

Austrian writer-director Michael Haneke (director of "Caché" and "The Piano Player") has pulled off an unusual stunt with the recent release of "Funny Games" in the US. The film is an almost shot-by-shot remake of the excellent though scary original Austrian language original, released in 1997. "Funny Games" is the tale of two clean-cut smiling sadists (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet) that terrorise a family - for a while. It's rare, if not unique, for a remake to be a total remake, rather than an adaptation, given the differences in mainstream American audiences and the very varied European audiences.

The new version is picking up excellent reviews (some saying it's as good as the original). The official site: Funny Games US.

Funny Games 1997 on Amazon US

Crossing Europe awards

The Austrian festival that features a strong East European slant gave its awards this weekend. Director Pia Marais picked up the European Competition with "Die Unerzogenen/The Unpolished" (Germany 2007) co-written with Horst Markgraf. The audience voted for "Avril/April" by Gérald Hustache-Mathieu for the Ray Audience Prize. The CROSSING EUROPE Award Local Artist was split for the first time, going to Libertad Hackl for "Bleiben will ich, wo ich nie gewesen bin" and to Lukas Marxt and Michael Petri for "Nach der Eishöhle". The jury distinguished the work "Fatsy" by Oliver Stang and Christian Tod with an Honourable Mention. Visit the blog here.

Crossing Europe Award goes to first-time director/writer

The second edition of Austria's CROSSING EUROPE Filmfestival Linz presented 150 films from 30 countries as well as 20 further events. This year's award went to the 22-year-old French actress and first-time director Isild Le Besco (France - left on photo), who impressed the competition jury (Cis Bierinckx/Belgium, Nadejda Koseva/Bulgaria, Jan Krüger/Germany, Micha Shagrir/Israel and Elma Tataragic/Bosnia) with her debut film “Demi-Tarif/Half Price”. The CROSSING EUROPE Award 2005 Local Artist, went to Siegfried A. Fruhauf for his most recent work. A special mention went to Barbara Musil and Karo Szmit for their short film "SW-NÖ 04". The EastWest Filmdistribution nominated the documentary “Totally Personal” by Bosnian director Nedzad Begovic for a special presentation at CROSSING EUROPE 2006.

Link: Crossing Europe.