DEAR MOVIE AND CINEFEST FRIENDS!

Over the past eighteen years the CineFest Miskolc International Film Festival has become one of the most well-known and – according to the feedbacks – most popular film festivals in Hungary. Every September film professionals and audiences alike can enjoy the most outstanding, most valuable films from the world’s film production of the past year. All films in our Competition program are Hungarian premieres.

Preparations for this year’s CineFest started at the beginning of the year and, as in previous years, we are looking forward to welcoming you to Miskolc from 1 to 9 September with a program of screenings and related professional events showcasing the latest world and domestic film production.

This year’s Competition program will again be of a quality, comparable to that of Europe’s major festivals.

The festival also cooperates with several international professional organizations, and as a result we are honored that each year the FIPRESCI (The International Federation of Film Critics) delegates a jury of internationally renowned film critics to our festival and holds its annual general meeting in Miskolc again this year. We have excellent cooperation with the international organisations SIGNIS and Interfilm, which delegate a jury to CineFest that decides on the International Ecumenical Jury Prize. The jury delegated by the C.I.C.A.E. (Confédération Internationale des Cinémas d’art et d’essai) – International Confederation of Art Cinemas – decides on the international organization’s award through the eyes of cinema operators.

The international recognition of the Festival is reflected in our cooperation with several international film festivals. Each year, one of our festival’s missions is to introduce domestic audiences to the film culture of such countries that are not or only very rarely represented in the Hungarian film offer. This year we focus on the Asian region’s cinema, outside the Competition program. Six Hong Kong feature films will be screened out of competition, courtesy of The Hong Kong International Film Festival, with the majority of the filmmakers visiting the festival. We will also screen three feature films and three short films representing South Korean cinema. All of these films are Hungarian premieres.

The venues of the Festival are the same: the House of Arts with its great hall and two small art-movie theatres (Urania and Béke) and the Zukor-room in the Csodamalom Puppet Theatre of Miskolc.

When we came up with the idea of the Festival we had a dream: we wanted CineFest Miskolc to become a significant international film festival in the region. By the thoughtful selection process and the rich joint programs we were able to succeed.

On behalf of the organizers I would like to extend my most heartfelt invitation to every filmmakers, professionals, film lovers and I hope that everyone will find her/his favorite in this year’s program!

 

Bíró Tibor

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