The 6th Crossing Europe Film Festival, held in Linz on April 20-26, will open with the world premiere of Sebastian Brameshuber’s documentary, Muezzin.

The documentary focuses on several young muezzins, the people chosen by a mosque to lead the call to prayer, as they prepare for the preliminary rounds of a national Turkish muezzin competition.

The opening night will also include Austrian premieres of Ursula Meier’s Home and Maren Ade’s Everyone ElseandMabrouk El Mechri’s Jean Claude Van Damme satire, JCVD

The competition for the festival’s main award is worth $13,300 (Euros 10,000) and the following titles will compete:

- The Noise In My Head by Vincent Pluss (Switzerland/Germany)

- Grown Ups by Anna Novin (France/Sweden)

- Can Go Through Skin by Esther Rots (The Netherlands)

- Involuntary by Robert Ostlund (Sweden)

- Mid-AugustLunch by Gianni di Gregorio (Italy)

- Light Gradient by Jan Kruger (Germany)

- Snow by Aida Begic (Bosnia and Herzegovina/Germany/France/Iran)

- Unmade Beds by Alexis dos Santos (UK)

- Wrong Rosary by Mahmut Fazil Coskun (Turkey)

- Versailles by Guillame Depardieu (France)

The competition jury has five members: Ludmila Cvikova (cultural events organiser & program designer for the International Film Festival Rotterdam); Romanian producer-director Tudor Giurgiu; Nikolia Niktin, the founder of the film magazine Schnittand foreign delegate for the Berlinale; independent film critic Alexandra Seitz; and Turkish director Seyfi Teoman.

To mark Linz’s status as 2009 European Capital of Culture, the traditional European Panorama has been extended to become the Panorama Special Extra Europa @ Crossing Europe programme. This section will present films from Norway, Switzerland and Turkey - European countries that are not in the EU. Other titles include Ben Hopkins’s The Market - A Tale Of The Trade, Shane Meadows’ Somers Townand Helena Trestikova’s Rene.

The tribute programme will honour Swiss directors Ursula Meier and Lionel Baier, while the European genre section Night Sight, established last year, will include Dario Argento’s Mothertrilogy (Suspiria, Inferno and The Third Mother), James Watkins’ Eden Lake and Tommy Wirkola’s Dead Snow.

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