NASHVILLE, Tennessee – March 2, 2011 – Major award winners from both the 2010 Cannes and 2011 Sundance Film Festivals will headline the World Cinema and competition lineups for the 2011 Nashville Film Festival (NaFF) presented by Nissan when it takes place April 14-21 at the Regal Green Hills Cinemas, it was announced today.
Winner of the Palm d’Or at Cannes, Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” a natural, free-wheeling, pensive and dryly funny film combining Buddhist belief, cinematic history, and Northern Thailand folklore, will join more than a dozen international films in the World Cinema category. Joining “Uncle Boonmee…” in the category will be “Buck,” American director Cindy Meehl’s portrait of Buck Brannaman, the inspiration for “The Horse Whisperer.” The film picked up the Audience Award for Best Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Also of note in World Cinema is veteran Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike’s “13 Assassins” and Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Frammartino’s “Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times).”
In the Narrative Competition Presented by Bridgestone, director Alrick Brown’s “Kinyarwanda,” winner of the World Cinema Audience Award at Sundance, is based on true accounts from survivors during the 1994 Rwandan genocide who took refuge at the Grand Mosque of Kigali and the Imams who opened their doors to give refuge to the Tutsi and to those Hutu who refused to participate in the killing.
Films for the 2011 Festival, including shorts, special presentations and additional programming, which will be announced in the weeks ahead, were culled by artistic director Brian Owens from 2,403 entries from 102 countries.
“I’m exhausted, but exhilarated!” said Owens. “We again broke a record on submissions, and I think we’ve gathered a truly diverse collection of international films that will give fans a healthy survey of what’s going on in filmmaking around the world. Continuing a trend, the lines between narrative and documentary continues to be blurred, making the experience of film more engaging than ever.”
The Music Films/Music City Competition presented by Gibson, Documentary Competition presented by Documentary Channel and New Directions Competition categories will not disappoint, assures Owens, while fans of “the strange, the funny, the patently offensive, the gross, and the bizarre” also have something to look forward to. In a Graveyard Shift category highlight, Norwegian director André Øvredal’s “The Troll Hunter” will lead filmgoers into the remote forests of northern Norway to meet a mysterious man named Hans, who isn’t a bear poacher as they first suspect. He’s The Troll Hunter – charged with protecting the citizenry from the gargantuan horrors that lurk in the far north.
A complete list of Documentary, Narrative, Music Films/Music City and New Directors Competitions follows, as well as World Cinema and Graveyard Shift Categories can be found here.
