Staff Reporter
IT’S the number-one highlight in Mallorca film lovers’ calendar.
The Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival (EMIFF) brings together cinema buffs and the casually curious alike.
Past festivals have enticed Hollywood royalty like Danny de Vito and Irish actor Colm Meaney. Last October’s event showcased the Oasis documentary Supersonic and Tour de France, narrated by Gerard Depardieu.
This year, three-times Academy Award winner Paul Haggis is the guest of honour, and will receive a special award. His 2005 film Crash will be given a special screening.
The brainchild of German actress Sandra Seeling Lipski, EMIFF is one of the fastest growing film festivals in the Mediterranean.
This year 103 films, documentaries and short stories will feature.
“It’s been a wild ride so far and it keeps getting bigger and crazier every year,” said festival director Sandra.
“Sometimes I need to stop, breath and realize what EMIFF has become how many people it has touched and all the ideas that are still to be launched.”
Born in Berlin and raised in Mallorca, Sandra, a graduate from New York’s prestigious Lee Strasberg academy, has a glittering resume of her own. CSI NY, Borat and Jane the Virgin are just some of the films she has appeared in.
She is currently planning her first feature film as producer and actress.
A gala opening night takes place on Thursday night, with the opening film the Song Of Sway Lake screened at 20.00 at Teatro Principal.
Palma cinema Cine Ciutat and Es Balaurd, the museum of modern and contemporary art will screen films. Port Adriano will also host a Halloween night special showing of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic Psycho, and Wes Craven’s 1996 slasher movie Scream.
We take a look at some of the festival highlights.
Song Of Sway Lake
THE festival’s opening film is a coming-of-age story starring Rory Culkin and Robert Sheehan.
Following his father’s suicide, a young man returns to hs old family home at Sway Lake to retrieve a rare 78 vinyl record. While trying to come to terms with his father’s death, he has to deal with family dysfunctions (including an overbearing grandmother), romance, and trying to let go. Toni Award-nominee Mary Beth Peil plays the grandmother in writer/director Ari Bell’s new film.
The Big Sick
BASED on the real-life relationship between the two main actors (Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon) this is a cross-cultural rom-com with a modern slant. A one-night stand between a Pakistan-born comedian and a gig-goer turns into something more serious. But the relationship causes frictions with the funnyman’s strict Muslim parents and when his new love is struck with a mystery illness he is forced into a premature meeting with her parents (played by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano). Produced by midas-touch-man comedy man Judd Apatow (Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall).
Crash
WRITER-DIRECTOR Paul Haggis’s masterpiece deals with the clash of cultures across LA’s urban sprawl. Starring Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle and Thandie Newton, it is a powerful examination of simmering tension, enduring bigotry and common humanity that interlinks characters through the film’s separate strands. Haggis said he wrote Crash as a riposte to complacent liberals who believed race relations in the US had resolved themselves. With race, identity, gender and sexuality currently pushed to the top of the agenda by Donald Trump, Crash carries an extra resonance in 2017. Haggis remains the only screenwriter to have penned consecutive Best Academy Award films (Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Crash (2005).
Reevolution
THE story behind the making of this Spanish crime thriller is a tale for the big screen in itself. In 2003, a script was written about four characters in a society gripped by economic crisis who decide to change the course of history. After more than seven years trying to shoot the film, it was finally made in 2014. The no-budget independent film ‘changed the way of making cinema’, according to its Spanish crew. Made for less than 6,000 euros – 4, 500 euros of which went on paying tax – Reevolution was shot at 80 different locations using 50 actors, 130 extras and in 10 languages.
Shiners
A DOCUMENTARY looking at the work of men and women who clean shoes for a living.
Stacey Tenenbaum’s first feature film was shot on the streets of Paris, London, New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sarajevo and La Paz. Many of the shoe shiners filmed explain the pride and method they put into their work while struggling to provide for their families. .
