The 20th CineFest is a festival of big returns

The 20th CineFest is a festival of big returns

2024.07.24. 10:48

This year, for the 20th time, CineFest Miskolc International Film Festival will present the biggest and most acclaimed international films. The competition program of the jubilee festival includes the latest works of well-known filmmakers from previous years, such as Sean Baker, Szabolcs Hajdu and Yorgos Lanthimos.

“CineFest has come a long way over the years to become the largest international festival of contemporary feature films in Hungary today. At the same time, the anniversary is an opportunity not only to look forward, but also to take a look at the past. The competition program therefore includes works by filmmakers whose films have already been screened at CineFest over the past two decades. They have now become established, internationally recognized filmmakers,” said festival director Tibor Bíró.

A good example is Sean Baker, one of the most prominent American independent filmmakers. His films Tangerine (2015) and Red Rocket (2021) were featured in the CineFest line-up, and he visited Miskolc for the premiere of the latter with the film’s leading actor Simon Rex. His latest film Anora, like Red Rocket, made its debut in the Cannes Competition and won the Palme d’Or, the most important award of the year. Also in competition at CineFest, Anora stars a young Brooklyn sex worker who meets and marries the son of an oligarch in a fairytale-like way. The parents take a less than favourable view of the unexpected marriage, and travel to the United States to push for an end to the romance. Baker’s unusual comedy, crazy to the extreme, but at the same time highly socially relevant, is guaranteed to fill the Pressburger Hall!

Director Szabolcs Hajdu has previously won the Special Award of the City of Miskolc in 2007 for White Palms and the Audience Award at CineFest in 2016 for It’s Not the Time of My Life. The final piece in his trilogy of couples’ relationships, which begins with the latter film and continues with Kalman’s Day (2023), is Vultures Wake, which is screened in the competition program before its cinematic premiere in the fall. A death reunites three old friends. Over the years, their paths have diverged: one has a teaching job in Mexico, another lives the life of a lower-middle-class man, and the third is financially broke. The girlfriends who later join them put up with their remarks and wisecracks for a while, but after a while each of them has had enough of the other. The first two films in the trilogy will also be shown in an open-air screening at the festival, as part of the Cineversity program organized by the University of Miskolc.

The biggest sensation of last year’s CineFest was that Yorgos Lanthimos’ film Poor Things, shot in Hungary, was screened at the same time as at the Venice Film Festival. The film went on to make an unprecedented success, winning the Golden Lion in Venice and later four Oscars, including Best Actress (Emma Stone). Meanwhile, Lanthimos has completed his new film, Kinds of Kindness, which will of course be screened for the first time in Hungary at CineFest. The bizarre tale, which is divided into three parts, stars the excellent duo of the Poor Things, Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, this time alongside Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley and Hunter Schafer. Plemons, who played three different roles in the film, won the Best Actor award at Cannes for his performance.

More and more information on the detailed program of the festival will be released in the coming weeks.

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