No rest for the mid-week: several excellent films from Cannes (Animal Kingdom, The Passion of Dodin Bouffant, Room 999) with European stars such as Romain Duris, Benoit Magimel and Juliette Binoche, and a Hong Kong crime (Over My Dead Body) with an audience meeting are among Wednesday’s highlights.

In Sweet East, screened in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and shown here in the Competition Program, high school student Lillian (rising star Talia Ryder) leaves her class trip – and seemingly her old self – under dramatic circumstances. From there, she becomes who the people she meets on her aimless wanderings see her as. One of the stars of the film is Simon Rex, a former CineFest guest.

The last screening of the film at the festival. Tickets for the screening are available for 1.000 HUF and can be bought in advance.

William Shatner is a legendary actor who is as well known to audiences as the title character in T.J. Hooker as he is as Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek series (and of course the Star Trek movies). The star has had quite a colorful career, known as a science fiction writer, singer and, at 90, one of the first and still one of the oldest space tourists. Screened here as part of the CineDocs competition program, the community-funded You Can Call Me Bill, from the US SXSW festival, recalls this fascinating career, largely interpreted by the star himself. Director Alexandre O. Philippe has previously made films about a number of Hollywood sensations, including the portrait of the recently deceased William Friedkin, a film on the making of The Exorcist, as well as a visual account on the famous shower scene in Psycho. His admiration for Shatner is undeniable: the actor had been approached by several people with the idea of a portrait film, but Philippe’s enthusiasm and knowledge were the only thing that convinced him to say yes.

The last screening of the film at the festival. Tickets for the film are available for 1,000 HUF and should be purchased in advance.

This year in Cannes, the opening film of the Un Certain Regard competition program was Animal Kingdom, shown at the Competition Program at CineFest. In the near future, part of the population has mutated into a human-animal hybrid. Among them is François’ wife. He moves with his 16-year-old son Émile (the excellent Romain Duris and Paul Kircher) from Paris to a small rural town where they have set up a center for the “Others”. Stunning visuals and intimacy are a natural blend in this emotive French film.

Tickets are available for 1.000 HUF and should be purchased in advance.

In 1982, Wim Wenders asked his 16 colleagues in Room 666 how they saw the future of cinema. The intervening forty years have seen many changes in the film industry, most recently with the pandemic once again predicting the death of cinema. The film Room 999, which is part of the CineDocs competition programme, goes back to Wenders’ original question. At the Cannes International Film Festival, cinema’s greatest celebration, director Lubna Playoust asked sixteen of the greatest directors of our time, from David Cronenberg, Asghar Farhadi, Baz Luhrmann, Ruben Östlund, Paolo Sorrentino and Joachim Trier to, of course, Wim Wenders, what they think about the coming decades of cinema.

Tickets are available for 1.000 HUF and should be purchased in advance.

In partnership with the Hong Kong International Film Festival, CineFest presents six outstanding Hong Kong films as part of this year’s Open Eye program. One of them, Over My Dead Body, invites you into a housing estate where all hell breaks loose after the residents find a dead body. The film will be screened on Wednesday 6 September at 7pm at the Urania, followed by a meeting with one of the cast, actor Wong You-nam. Wong You-nam, 39, has been a regular in films since 2002. He was seen in the first part of the hugely popular and critically acclaimed martial arts action film Ip Man (2008) alongside Donnie Yen, and in the spectacular sci-fi comedy The Midnight After, which premiered in Europe in the prestigious Panorama program at the Berlin International Film Festival.

The film is shown only once at the festival! Tickets for the screening are available for 1.000 HUF and should be purchased in advance.

The legendary Wim Wenders’ new film, Perfect Days in the Competition Program, is a human tale of contemporary Tokyo. Although Hirayama’s life may seem difficult, boring, even humiliating at times, routine frames each day, and meditating in the park, reading and listening to music provide the daily pleasure. The lead actress Kōji Yakusho deservedly won the Best Actor award at Cannes.

The last screening of the film at the festival. Tickets for the performance are available for 1,000 HUF and are best purchased in advance.

It is 1885, and the famous gourmand Dodin (Benoit Magimel) is constantly inspired by the culinary inspirations of his faithful cook Eugénie (Juliette Binoche). Their perfectly balanced meals reveal more than a thousand gestures about their feelings for each other, but a proposal threatens her independence. Showing love in its purest form, The Passion of Dodin Bouffant won Best Director at Cannes and is in Competition at CineFest.

Tickets for the screening are available for 1.000 HUF and are best purchased in advance.

Blaga is a seventy-year-old, recently widowed former teacher with strong moral principles. When phone scammers steal the money she has set aside for her husband’s grave, her moral compass slowly starts to spin out of control. Bulgarian Blaga’s Lessons won Best Film and Best Actress in Karlovy Vary and will now compete in the CineFest Competition section.

The last screening of the film at the festival. Tickets are available for 1.000 HUF and should be purchased in advance.