The 31st edition of the Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival (Vosges) opens Wednesday evening under the sign of literature, and will see feature films and short films compete with jury presidents from the literary world.
This unmissable event for fans of the fantasy genre will this year “
rest on its foundations, literature and mythologies
”, explains its director, Bruno Barde, to AFP.
Last year, the public and jury crowned the same film,
La Pietà
, by Eduardo Casanova, recalls Mr. Barde.
“It’s a fairly difficult and demanding film, and I told myself that Gérardmer’s audience had reached maturity.”
This is why Mr. Barde decided to return to
“what grounds us, and that is mainly writing,”
he says, citing Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, as an example.
This “tribute” to literature is reflected in particular by the choice of presidents of the feature film and short film jury: the journalist, author and director Bernard Werber, and the author Bernard Minier.
“The fantastic is not just ugly, it's not just zombies, it's also poetry, it's dreamlike, magical
,” continues Bruno Barde.
The selection “is a mirror of the world”, according to him.
Around 250 films were viewed to arrive at this selection of around thirty works.
The forbidden play
, by Hideo Nakata (Japan), will open the ball Wednesday evening, when other feature films including
Perpetra T Or
, by Jennifer Reeder,
Sleep
, by Jason Yu, or
En attendant la nuit
, by Céline Rouzet, will be broadcast over the days to try to win the Grand Jury Prize on Sunday.
“I'm more into fantasy cinema than horror cinema, I like suspense stories
,” Bernard Werber tells AFP, “honored” to have been chosen to chair the feature film jury.
“As president, I will favor the scenario more than the hemoglobin or violent aspect
,” adds the author of the
Les Fourmis
trilogy , who was also director of
Our Friends the Earthlings
(2006).
The important thing is
“the ability to keep the spectator in suspense, so that he forgets his daily life and is only concerned with what is going to happen to the characters,”
according to him.
Five short films are also in competition, facing a jury chaired by Bernard Minier, author whose first novel,
Glacé
, appears in the Sunday Times list of the 100 best thrillers published since 1945. A retrospective on the theme of Vampires is proposed, including
Dracula
, by Francis Ford Coppola (1992),
Nosferatu the Vampire
(Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922) and
The Vampire Ball
(Roman Polanski, 1967).
Some 600 volunteers participate in the success of this festival, which has become
“a world reference”
, underlines Bruno Barde.
Some films do not yet have distributors and find them in Gérardmer.