SOMEWHERE (Sofia Coppola) The world premieres are coming strong and fast for the Fall film season as the Venice Film Festival has announced a particularly stellar competition section. For North Americans not making the trip to the Lido, many of these films will receive their North American premieres at the Toronto Film Festival a week later in September (the two festivals actually overlap for a few days on the first weekend of September). Twenty-two films have been set to ...

– PortugalIn The Darkness of the Night by Canijo– SpainObaba by Armendáriz- ItalyPrivate by Saverio Costanzo – FinlandMother of Mine by Klaus - BelgiumL'Enfant by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne- HongrieFateless by Lajos– FranceJoyeux Noël by Christian Carion– PolandKomornik – Germany/AustriaHidden - Caché– NorwayKissed By Winter– SwedenZozo – DenmarkAdam’s Apples – SwitzerlandWinter without a fire ...

FIPRESCI Prize: PRIVATE (Saverio Costanzo, Italy, 2004)Jury Statement – Marcelo Janot, Henry Sheehan and Zlatko Vidackovic We found that PRIVATE combined creative ingenuity and passion in ways that would be unusual for a seasoned director, never mind for someone making a debut feature. Saverio Costanzo has created a dramatic situation that could easily have lent itself to sloganeering: A self-confident and educated Palestinian family suddenly finds its house occupied by an Israeli army platoon...