KRS launches the 6^th edition of the Malta International Film Festival with its array of affirmed masters of the art of narrative cinema:  Almodovar, Troell, Sorrentino, Salles, among others. 
 

The main thrust comes from two politically motivated films.  Sorrentino, a great detached stylist, presents ‘Il Divo’, an extraordinary urgent film about the intricacies of party politics as they interweave around a major political figure of the recent past, Andreotti.  In the manner of the great political film-maker Francesco Rosi, the film raises questions about how a man can serve the interests of the State, in a corrupt society, without arriving at some sort of compromise with evil. 
 

Uli Edel’s ‘The Baader Meinhof Complex’ is an objective detached account of intense power about German urban terrorism in the ’60s and ’70s, which maintans a fine balace between the personal and the political as it tells its harrowing, defiant tale.  Politics of the social kind are evident in Daniela Thomas/Walter Salles ‘Linha De Passe’, in which an impoverished working-class, single mother tries to keep her family of four differently-fathered sons together in a corrupt, anonymous South American city.  Emotinally intense, it is beautifully edited to create an almost lyrical documentary effect. 
 

Poetic, enigmatic and beautifully haunting is Aditya Assarat’s ‘Wonderful Town’ which traces the progress of a doomed love affair between a local girl and an outsider in a closed community still suffering the devastations of the 2004 tsunami.  Even more tender is the story of a housewife who learns how to give transcience a permanent form by capturing those ‘Everlasting Moments’ with her camera in Troell’s magnificent account of working-class life in Sweden between the wars. 
 

In ‘Broken Embraces’, a film of great beauty and acute intelligence, Almodovar who is a passionate romantic obsessed with cinema, narrates the painful sacrifices involved in a series of relationships between parents and children.  And maternal bonds feature in Safy Nebbou’s disturbing film ‘The Mark of an Angel’ which portrays the metaphysical nature of the instincts of a mother whose mind has been shattered by grief. 
 

This year’s edition of the Festival also covers a range of films which touch on a wide spectrum of genres:  Chan’s spectacular ‘The Warlords’ about the Christian Taiping Rebellion in China in the late 19^th century;  Kapadia’s ‘Far North’ which tells of a savage primal myth set in an unidentified timeless landscape:  Joans Cuaron’s experimental, minimalist ‘Ano Una’ told through still photographs only;  Podeswa’s ‘Fugitive Pieces’, an imagined biography originating from the Nazi pogroms;  Duncan Jones’ psychological science fiction ‘Moon’.  Kim-Ji-Woon’s action packed  ‘The Good The Bad The Weird’ and Advani’s Bollywood romp ‘Chandni Chowk to China’. 
 

Good films are a vital part of any country’s cultural heritage.  There is an instance in ‘Everlasting Moments’ when Maria, as she acquires her first camera, is told “you have the gift of seeing” and the camera provides her with a deeper understanding of life and history.  This is what good cinema is about.
 

KRS Film Distributors, organizers of the Malta International Film Festival in the last five years, have pleasure in announcing the 6^th edition of the Festival which is to be held at the Embassy Cinema in Valletta from Wednesday 28 October to Tuesday 10 November. 
 

During the two week Festival KRS will be once again presenting for exhibition films from fourteen different countries, twelve of which are either winners or have been nominated for awards at renowned International Festivals. 
 

The following films will make up the 2009 Festival programme. 
 

 

Eleven of the films are in original dialogue with English subtitles, with the remaining three having English dialogue.