San Jose’s Cinequest film festival begins this Tuesday. The lineup includes 85 World, North American and U.S. premieres from 48 countries. In past Cinequest festivals, I have discovered some very strong European films, especially from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, and some delightful American indie comedies. This year, the lineup of thrillers looks unusually promising.
So far I have only seen one film from the festival lineup – tomorrow, I’ll be writing about In the Shadow, which won Best Film at the Czech Film Critics’ Awards and was the Czech submission to the Academy Awards.
The critical buzz from other festivals indicates that there are at least two movies not to miss. The Danish The Hunt plays on March 6. Mads Mikkelsen (After the Wedding, Casino Royale, A Royal Affair) stars as a teacher wrongly accused of child molestation, spurring hysteria in his town. Mikkelsen won the Best Actor award at Cannes.
The Sapphires plays on February 27. In this feel good movie set in the 60s, an Australian Aborigine girl group faces obstacles at home, but blossoms when the girls learn Motown hits to entertain US troops in Vietnam.
Here’s a curiosity: The last movie that actor Chris Penn made before his death in early 2006 is the thriller Aftermath. Aftermath has never been released, and its world premiere at Cinequest is this Friday (and it will also screen on March 3 and 5).
I’ll be seeing lots of films and writing about many of them. To avoid spamming my subscribers, you won’t be getting an automatic email for all of my Cinequest posts, so keep checking back here for my festival coverage. I’ll me summarizing my coverage on my one-stop CINEQUEST 2013 page (also linked off the header at the top of this page).
Cinequest runs from February 26 through March 10 in downtown San Jose. Check out the schedule and get tickets at Cinequest.