FEST to become competitive this year

BELGRADE - The 43rd International Film Festival FEST, set to begin on February 27, will be the first competitive edition of the festival, FEST's new art director Jugoslav Pantelic told Tanjug.

This year's FEST will be held under the slogan 'Here we are - in the constellation of winners'. The line-up will include 124 works of cinematic art - including 90 premieres - which will be shown by March 8 in a total of 242 screenings.

The festival opens on Friday at Belgrade's Sava Center with Bertrand Bonello's 'Saint Laurent'. Competing for the awards - which will be presented by an international jury - are 15 films made in UK, Hungary, Turkey, Italy, Jordan, Greece, Russia, France, Germany, Croatia, Georgia and Chile.

Along with the Serbian competitors, Vuk Rsumovic's 'No One's Child' and Goran Radovanovic's 'Enclave', the films by local authors Milutin Petrovic ('The Loop'), Luka Bursac ('Blackness') and the omnibus 'Equals' will have their premieres at the festival. Belgrade's DKC will screen Serbian films that have already been shown in cinemas across the country - 'Travelator', 'Barbarians', 'The Disobedient', 'Little Buddho', 'The Man Who Defended Gavrilo Princip', 'Monument to Michael Jackson'.

On March 3, FEST will host the premiere of 'The Sky Above Us', a debut film by Dutch writer/director Marinus Groothof about Belgrade during the NATO bombing in 1999.

Filmed in 2013 at several locations in Belgrade, the story focuses on the lives of three ordinary people facing constant threat from above, and ends with the bombing of Radio and Television of Serbia (RTS). The film had its world premiere on January 28, at the 44th International Film Festival in Rotterdam.

"Many things are new. FEST is getting an upgrade and...