Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest: Sweden is country in focus at 13th edition

This year’s Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest, which runs from October 21st to October 30th, 2022, will offer viewers an edition where Sweden is the country in focus.

Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, this year’s Palme d’Or winner, will premiere locally at the festival. Östlund, who previously won the Palme d’Or in 2017 for The Square, returned with a satire looking at the relationship between power and beauty.

Östlund’s latest film is joined in the program by two other films by up-and-coming filmmakers: Tarik Saleh’s Boy from Heaven (Sweden), winner of the Best Screenplay Award in Cannes this year, and Danish-Iranian Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider, which brought the Best Actress Award at the 2022 Cannes festival to Zar Amir Ebrahimi.

Abbasi, born in Iran 40 years ago, educated in Sweden and based in Denmark, made his second appearance in Cannes this year, having previously won the 2018 Un Certain Regard section with Border, a film about a border police officer. His new film, Holy Spider, is “the gritty tale of a serial killer who ‘cleanses’ the Iranian holy city of Mashhad of sex workers.”

Saleh’s Boy from Heaven is a dark thriller set in Cairo about an impoverished boy who wins a scholarship to the prestigious Al-Azhar University, where he finds himself drawn into a brutal power struggle between Egypt’s religious and political elites.

A former graffiti artist, Saleh grew up with a filmmaker father and worked in his film studio before attending an art school in Alexandria. As well as directing episodes of the cult series Westworld and Ray Donovan, his 2017 film The Nile Hilton Incident won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

At this year’s festival, not only the Nordic but also the local creative force will be presented. The festival will open with Metronom, Alexandru Belc’s feature film debut which won the Best Director Award in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes this year. The film will be presented at Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest two weeks before the theatrical release on November 4th.

The screenings take place at Cinema Elvire Popesco, Cinema Muzeul Țăranului and Cinemateca Eforie.

More information can be found at filmedefestival.ro and on the festival’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.