Fribourg film festival highlights theme of freedom
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Fribourg film festival highlights theme of freedom
From March 21, the Fribourg International Film Festival (FIFF) in Switzerland will be offering a programme dedicated to freedom.
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During the nine days of the festival, 108 films from 52 countries will be shown, including 17 world premieres and 42 Swiss premieres.
Visitors to the 39th edition of the FIFF can expect “completely different films”, as Thierry Jobin, artistic director of the festival, told the Keystone-SDA news agency on Wednesday: “Comedies, horror films, animated films and completely crazy things.”
The festival will open and close with a documentary film about Afghanistan. The festival will open with Champions of the Golden Valley, a film about the dream of skiers in the mountains of a country on the brink of collapse. The closing film Bread & Roses focuses on female resistance fighters whose rights are trampled underfoot by the Taliban. Both films tell of lost freedom and dashed hopes, as the FIFF wrote in a press release on this year’s programme.
Overview of world cinema
The films in the international competitions – 12 feature-length and 16 short films – also emphasize the longing for freedom. In addition to Bread & Roses, these include The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos from Nigeria, Pavane for an Infant from Malaysia and Senhoritas ou O silêncio das ostras from Brazil.
Other sections at the festival provide an overview of world cinema, with films from Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. For example, the section Decoded: Africa beyond the Cold War with films about personal or collective resistance to colonialism.
Thierry Jobin also expressed his concern to the media at the program conference about the decision by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation to completely cut its cultural partnerships in Switzerland from 2029. These subsidies of CHF300,000 make up 10% of the festival’s budget.
The 39th FIFF runs from March 21 to 30.
Translated from German by DeepL/mga
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