New era of cinema

Volver, Pedro Almadovar's latest movie, will open this year's Era New Horizons Festival in Wrocław. The festival's program includes 243 feature-length films and documentaries and 279 short films from 51 countries, mainly from Europe. Some 120 movies will be premiered in Wrocław.

Carl Davis, Bibi Andersen, Sebastian Campos, Jean-Charles Fitoussi, Joanna Bruzdowicz and Andrzej Seweryn are among the festivals' special guests, and the festival will close with the 2006 Cannes Golden Palm winner, Ken Loach's The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

The traditional New Horizons competition will have 18 new films directed by the Quay Brothers, Aleksander Sokurow, Lukas Moodysson, Lisandro Alonso, Bruno Dumont and others. The New Polish Films competition, with a prize amounting to zł.100,000, was established by the Mayor of Wrocław and will premiere such pictures as Andrzej Seweryn's Who never lived..., Krzysztof Krause and Joanna Kos-Krauze's Savior's Square and Xawery Żuławski's Chaos.

The most attractive part of the festival, the panorama of contemporary film, will include the biggest events and discoveries from other international festivals: Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto, Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, Patrice Chereau's Gabrielle and Paradise Now by Hany Abu-Assad along with many others.

The festival, which was previously held in Cieszyn, will also show documentaries, short films, music, and retrospectives. Viewers can see some 20 films from Argentinian cinema between 1896 and 2006, a series of movies showing the works of Agnes Varda and Ingmar Bergman, documentaries such as Philip Groening's Into Great Silence, Workingman's Death by Michael Glawogger, a concert of Manuel Goetschning and Kinga Kiełczyńska, as well as films from Wrocław's alternative directors Bodo Kox and the Matwiejczyk Brothers.