FEST – New Directors | New Films Festival is a unique celebration of new cinema and new filmmakers. The festival will host its 12th edition in 2016, between the 20th and 27th of June, in Espinho, Portugal.
For its upcoming edition, FEST will bring to its audience some of the best films by up and coming Bulgarian directors.
Screening at FEST is “Getting Fat in a Healthy Way” (2015), a Bulgarian short ficition film directed by Kervork Aslanyan and competing for the Silver Lynx Award for Best Short Fiction. “Getting Fat in a Healthy Way” won the Youth Jury Award for Best Short Film at the Huesca Film Festival (2015), as well as Bigas Luna Award for Best Story and 2nd place for Best Short Film at the European Short Film Festival (2016) and the Euroshort Award for Best Film at the Sedicorto International Film Festival (2015).
NATFA (National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts) is a partner school of FEST and will be showcasing a programme of some of the best films by their students as part of NEXXT (a competitive section of the festival offering the audience a first encounter with the next generation of filmmakers). The films chosen by the school are “Soldier” (directed by Dessy Tombusheva), “Love” (directed by Boya Harizanova), “Foggy Forest” (directed by Anelia Tarpomanova) and “Faces from Instanbul” (directed by Assya Atanasova).
In addition to the screenings, FEST includes a Pitching Forum, in which participants have the chance to present their projects for shorts, features, television series or documentaries to a panel of experts, producers and investors who are looking for new ventures to support and invest in.
FEST New Directors | New Films is unique in that it also includes FEST – Training Ground, a 6 day educational forum that proposes a series of workshops and master classes lead by top experts with years of experience in the film industry. This year we count among the guests of the festival Gemma Jackson, Emmy winning production designer of “Game of Thrones”, Bela Tarr, Hungarian director of “Satantango” and “A Turin Horse”, whose films have been awarded in Cannes and Berlin, as well as Mark Sanger, Oscar winning editor of “Gravity”.
Through the festival and its parallel events, FEST brings together the highest established film professionals and young filmmakers who are starting to carve their path in the industry, providing them with an ideal context for exchanging ideas and sparking collaborations.
For more details, visit www.fest.pt http://www.fest.pt/