CPH PIX reveals line-up

The Austrian director will attend the screening of Hope, Faith and Love (Hoffnung, Glaube, Liebe).

The CPH PIX line-up, which includes 160 features presented at 400 screenings and events between April 11-24, was announced last night (March 13) at Copenhagen’s Grand Theatre, followed by the Danish premiere of US director Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers.

For the first time, the 14-day showcase will be launched by a Danish feature, Michael Noer’s Northwest (Nordvest).

Based at Copenhagen’s Cinemateket, the programme will unspool in eight cinemas, adding Øst for Paradis in Aarhus.

Northwest, which already received the international critics’ FIPRESCI prize at Sweden’s Göteborg International Film Festival, has also been selected for the New Talent Grand Pix main competition for first features, which for the first time has two local entries – the other, New Zealand-born Daniel Joseph Borgman’s The Weight of Elephants, co-produced by Zentropa Entertainments.

An international jury will decide the winner of €15,000 ($19,000).

Festival director Jacob Neiiendam said: “The Danish contenders are very different from the domestic fare, which are doing well at the domestic box-office. But what the festival wants to show more than anything is the diversity of international filmmaking, which - in a difficult market - is sometimes lost on the way to the theatres.”

Another CPH PIX highlight is Dutch director George Sluizer’s thriller Dark Blood, the film US actor River Phoenix was working on at the time of his death in 1993, which Sluizer completed almost 20 years later.

The schedule also includes Spotlights on France, Germany, Italy, UK, Middle East, Iran – Thrilling North, American Indies, Asian Connection, Thrills & Kills, and It’s All in the Family, films by the children of famous directors.

In 2012, four years after CPH PIX was established by the merger of two festivals, it took 40,200 admissions.