David Hare’s Page Eight and David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method will open and close this year’s Warsaw Film Festival (WFF) which is running for ten days on nine cinema screens with a programme of 127 feature-length films and 97 shorts from 59 countries from October 7-16.

An International Jury comprising veteran sales agent Christa Saredi, Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski, Romanian filmmaker Bogdan George Apetri, the winner of the Special Jury Award and FIPRESCI Prize at last year’s WFF for his feature Outbound, Uruguay’s Alvaro Brechner, the winner of the Free Spirit Award in 2009 for Bad Day for Fishing, and St Petersburg-based producer Artem Vassiliev will judge on a lineup of 20 films including four world premieres.

Originally, the festival organisers had invited the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who is currently under house arrest in his homeland, to serve as the jury president.

The four titles invited to screen as world premieres in Warsaw’s international competition are Christoffer Boe’s psychological drama Beast, Kenji Yamauchi’s subtle balance between tragedy and comedy Being Mitsuko,  Zhanna Issabayeva’s Losing Innocence in Alma-Ata, and Naghi Nemati’s drama Three and a Half about three prisoners trying to leave Iran illegally, while new films by Mexico’s Arturo Ripstein (Reasons of the Heart), Spain’s Chema de la Pena (17 Hours) and Farkhot Abdullaev (Presumed Consent) are among the international premieres.

In addition, the competition for the PLN 100,000 Warsaw Grand Prix includes European premieres of Christophe van Rampoey’s Lena, Chi Yuarn Lee’s Blowfish, and  Nassim Abassi’s Majid.

Meanwhile, Kinotavr programme director Sitora Alieva, Polish writer-director Andrzej Bart and Scottish filmmaker David Mackenzie will make up the international jury for the 1-2 Competition of first and second full-length features to decide on its winning film from 17 titles including Austrian actor Karl Markovics’ directorial debut Breathing, Oday Rasheed’s Qarantina, Ruslan Pak’s Hanaan, David F. Wnendt’s Combat Girls, Robbie Pickering’s Natural Selection, and  Angelina Nikonova’s Twilight Portrait.

A separate jury will judge films in the Free Spirit Competition which will be presenting European premieres of Donald Li’s Close Encounter Of Mahjong, Sergio Aisenstein and Pablo Pintor’s The Man Who Dances, and Adam Pesce’s Splinters, among others, while the Documentary Features Competition is set to include European premieres of Varon Bonicos’ A Man’s Story, Anne Bass’ Dancing Across Borders, Jon Cooksey’s How To Boil A Frog, and the world premiere of Matthias Thönnissen’s Überflieger – The Art Of Ski-Jumping.

The sixth edition of the industry event known as CentEast Market Warsaw will run parallel to the film festival from October 14-16

Apart from the Warsaw Screenings programme of the latest in Polish film production, the CentEast Warsaw-Moscow showcase of selected Eastern European “works in progress” will be held on October 14 before an audience including international sales agents and representatives of film festivals.

This presentation, which is organised in association with the Russian production outfit TVINDIE and supported financially by MEDIA Mundus and the Polish Film Institute (PisF), will be repeated a week later on October 22 at Moscow’s 2morrow Film Festival.

Last year’s CentEast Warsaw-Moscow showcase included Anca Damian’s Romanian-Polish animated documentary Crulic – The Path to Beyond which had its world premiere in Locarno in August and will now be in the running in WFF’s International Competition.

Other industry events range from panels on sales and distribution, a workshop on film editing, and the FIPRESCI Warsaw Project aimed at young Eastern European film critics and jourmalists.

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