Daniele Terzoli, President of the Cappella Underground, has finally shed light on this year’s Trieste Science+Fiction festival. The 2012 edition will take place from Wednesday 5th December until Sunday 9th December at the Sala Tripcovich and Teatro Miela, where the winners of festival’s two competitions, the Asteroide and the Méliès d’Or, will be revealed. The Mayor and Councillor for Culture Roberto Cosolini were also at the press conference where the opening of Bonelli’s “L’Audace” exhibition (running in conjunction with the Festival) was also announced. Mayan predictions permitting, the display will run until the end of March 2013. Other news included information on admissions, press tickets, and accompanying parties. But let’s start by revealing the Festival’s programme, the most important news from the press conference.
There are ten films in the festival’s Asteroide and Méliès d’Or competitions this year. Movies include: the brilliant debut from Brandon Cronenburg Antiviral (in competition for the Asteroide prize); the hilarious Irish monster movie Grabbers by Jon Wright (Asteroid and Méliès); the first film by American independent directors Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorhead, Resolution (Asteroide); London zombie comedy Cockneys vs. Zombies (Asteroide and Méliès) by Matthias Hoene; Kiss of the Damned (Asteroide) by Xan Cassavetes, daughter of the great director Nick Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands – finally a female science fiction director in a predominantly masculine world. Other films in competition include Eron Sheean’s French-Australian co-production Errors of the Human Body (Asteroide and Méliès), that looks at the cost of scientific progress, paying particular attention to genetic research; Veit Helmer’s political science fiction film Baikonur (Méliès), with music by Goran Bregovich; and Jonathan Zarantonello’s Italian-American production The Butterfly Room (Méliès d’Or), starring Barbara Steele who plays a strange woman who lives alone and has a strange obsession for butterflies.
National premieres include the post-apocalyptic film The Divide (Asteroide) by French director Xavier Gens (who has acted as assistant director in films such as John Frankenheimer’s Ronin with Robert DeNiro and Jean Reno and Ringo Lam’s Maximum Risk, with Jean Claude Van Damme. Gens has also directed the acclaimed Frontier(s) and Hitman), with Lauren German, Milo Ventimiglia, Michael Biehn and Rosanna Arquette. Lastly, we have the third instalment in the celebrated fantasy horror saga [Rec]³ Génesis, (Méliès), directed by Paco Plaza and starring Leticia Dolera. Plaza co directed the previous two films along with Jaume Balagueró, and is in now shooting the films sequel, Rec4: Apocalypse, set for release in 2013)
Highly anticipated films out of competition include: Jan Kwiecinski, Alexey Fedorchenko and Harmony Korine’s episode film The Fourth Dimension; the Korean Doomsday Book by proven science fiction directors Kim Jee-woon and Yim Pil-sung; cult director Loes Carax’s film Holy Motors, about a man who continually changes his identity with Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue, Michel Piccoli and Denis Lavant; John Dies at the End about a drug that promises out of body experiences by American director Don Coscarelli, and the festival’s opening film, Looper, by American Rian Johnson, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis. The Disney film will enjoy general release in Italy from January 2013.
Let the science fiction begin!
