Regione Veneto
21.03-11.04.24- Film screenings of the European Parliament's Lux Prize 2024
From 21 March to 11 April 2024 in Mestre at the Cinema Dante d'essai there will be a cycle dedicated to the finalist films of the European Parliament's Lux Prize 2024, organised by the Europe Direct of the Venice City Council in collaboration with the European Parliament - Milan Office, the Council of Europe - Venice Office, CINIT Cineforum Italiano, the Associazione Dopolavoro Ferroviario and the Circuito Cinema Comunale di Venezia.
There are five finalist films for the 2024 edition, but there will only be four screenings and they will be introduced by three experts from the CINIT Cineforum Italiano
Time: 5 p.m. presentation, screening and debate
Venue: Cinema Dante d'essai - Via Sernaglia 12, Mestre-Venice
Screening in original language with Italian subtitles.
Free entrance subject to availability.
- Thursday 21 March 2024: LUX PRIZE 2024 finalist - 20,000 species of bees - by Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren (Spain) 129'
An eight-year-old girl feels uneasy because the people around her address her by a name in which she does not recognise herself. A summer spent among the beehives at her great-aunt's house will change her life and that of her mother forever.
Deep in a lush green forest in southern Estonia, a group of women gather in the shelter of the darkness of a smoke sauna to share their innermost thoughts and secrets. Bathed in enveloping warmth, they lay themselves bare to shed the fears and shame trapped in their bodies and thus regain their strength.
Carla Nowak, a young high school teacher of physical education and mathematics, is on her first day of work at a new school. What sets her apart from her new colleagues is her idealism. However, a series of unsolved thefts spoils the atmosphere among the teachers. When a Turkish student is accused and summoned by the headmistress in a humiliating manner, Carla decides to investigate. Thanks to a hidden camera, to the general astonishment, she unmasks the thief: the discreet secretary Friederike Kuhn. After this revelation, however, Carla is faced with an unsolvable dilemma: Friederike Kuhn is also the mother of her best pupil, Oskar Kuhn. The events she provokes are inexorably beyond her control. On the one hand, she is increasingly isolated from her colleagues. On the other, she has to cope with the psychological stress caused to Oskar, whom the other boys begin to call 'son of a thief'. The school management has a simple solution in such cases: transfer Oskar to another school. The boy, like his mother now suspended from work, is not intimidated. He contacts the school newspaper to tell the story from his mother's point of view, triggering a heated debate on truth and justice.
With its floating structure, the Adamant is a unique care centre. In the heart of Paris, on the Seine, it welcomes adults with mental disorders, helping them to regain a sense of stability, recover and keep their spirits up. The team running the centre is one of those trying to resist as best they can the deterioration and dehumanisation of psychiatry. The film invites us aboard the Adamant to meet the patients and staff who animate it day after day.-
LUX PRIZE winner 2023 Close - by Lukas Dhont (Belgium/France/Netherlands) 104'
The film tells the story of an intense friendship between two 13-year-olds, Leo and Remi. When their friendship is suddenly interrupted, Leo approaches Sophie, Remi's mother, trying to understand what happened. 'Close' is a film about friendship and responsibility.
LUX PRIZE - Premio Lux
The LUX Prize is a film prize awarded annually to a European-produced film by the European Parliament. It was established in 2007, fifty years after the Treaty of Rome.
The LUX Prize reflects the European Parliament's desire to support cultural and linguistic diversity, in the belief that such diversity can serve as a bridge between Europeans. The LUX Prize aspires to be an instrument to discuss Europe, its values, its contradictions and its future.
The aims of the Prize are to shed a different light on the public debate on European integration and to facilitate the circulation of European films by overcoming the language barrier that hinders the existence of a common European film market. They raise awareness of some of today's major social and political issues, such as mental health, poverty, freedom of expression, gender equality, LGBTIQ rights, to name but a few. With this in mind, the €87,000 awarded to the winning film is intended to subtitle it in all 24 official languages of the European Union and produce one film copy for each Member State.
The logo, on which the actual trophy is modelled, is a spiral of film inspired by the Tower of Babel, understood in a positive sense as a symbol of the richness of diversity, linguistic and cultural plurality of the European Union.
LUX FILM DAYS
After Venice, the selected films will continue their journey through Europe thanks to the Lux Film Days, this year in their sixth edition. This initiative is of great importance because not only professionals but also European viewers are today giving a fundamental direction to the film industry. It is therefore essential for everyone to be able to express their sensitivity towards cinema, and the awareness that Europe is rich and diverse. During the LUX Film Days, the 751 members of the European Parliament will be invited to vote for one of the three films in competition. In November 2024, the winner of the LUX Prize will be announced during the formal sitting of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, in the presence of the finalist filmmakers.
PAST WINNERS OF THE LUX PRIZE
(2012) Io sono Li di Andrea Segre
(2011) Les Neiges du Kilimandjaro di Robert Guédiguian
(2010) Die Fremde di Feo Aladag
(2009) Welcome di Philippe Lioret
(2008) Le silence de Lorna diJ ean-Pierre e Luc Dardenne
For informations:
Europe Direct del Comune di Venezia
Ca' Farsetti, San Marco 4136 - Venezia
numero verde 800 496200
fax 041 2748182
www.comune.venezia.it/europedirect
www.facebook.com/EuropeDirectVenezia
infoeuropa@comune.venezia.it