Eurocine, Ecuador’s European film festival, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with an edition that will feature 45 films on the billboard, screening in nine cities in the Andean country from September 20 to October 6, according to organizers become a statement. .
The competition, organized and produced by the Ochoymedio Cultural Foundation with the support of the European Union (EU) and the embassies of member states accredited in the country and at the same time accredited in the region, will open with the Spanish film “Las Niñas” by the director Pilar Palomero. The performances will take place in the cities of Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca, Portoviejo, Loja, Morona Santiago, Guaranda, Ibarra and Tulcán.
Ecuador’s Eurocine 2023 will maintain the classic sections that have remained throughout its two-decade existence, such as “Europe at the cutting edge, the intimate human drama”, dedicated to contemporary European cinema, with titles such as the French “Both Sides of the Blade”. / Fuego”, the Swiss “The Plow” and the Spanish “20,000 species of bees”. In the “Cracks, Waves” section, seven films are presented that are relevant to festivals and critics of world cinema, including the Austrian-Argentinian film. “A Little Love Package”, the German “Human Flowers from Flesh” and Music (Germany, 2023), the Spanish “Cerdita” and the Portuguese “Fuego Fatuo”.
Meanwhile, in the “Focus, Celluloid Pieces” section, five films will be shown that, with the latest works by Marie Kreutzer, Pietro Marcello and Paweł Łoziński, have become a homage to the materiality of cinema, with films such as the Austrian “Corsage” and the Polish “The Balcony Movie”. The section “Memory, where ghosts grow”, in turn, proposes a network of points of contact with the past, in which European films of the last two decades are honored, such as the German “The Dreamed Path”, the Spanish-French “The South”, the Hungarian “Adoption”, the Italian “Il Sorpasso” and the French “Beau Travail”.
Likewise, “Ramona Generation” will be the section that makes visible, from the perspective of children and young people, those realities that pass through different sensibilities, geographies and times, by presenting films such as the French “The Roof of the World”. Among others “Vicky’s Secret” and “Petite Vampire” as well as the German “System Crasher”. Finally, cinema from the most remote corners of Europe will also be present with “Europe, life is elsewhere”, which includes titles such as the Ukrainian “Luxembourg, Luxembourg”, the Latvian “My Love Affair with Marriage”, the Estonian “Kratt”, the Romanian “Mikado”, the Bulgarian “The Naked Truth about Zhiguli Band” and the Slovenian “Inventura”.
In this edition of the Eurocine of Ecuador there will also be parallel activities such as six lectures and the “cinema concert” entitled “Journey through the fairies” by the French duo Catherine Vincent, a show that brings to the present the magic of The cinema of Georges Méliès and Lotte Reiniger with performances in Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca and Loja. In addition, this show is accompanied by a fun workshop on “Creating a Soundtrack”, aimed at children aged 8 and over from Quito’s La Floresta district.
The EU Ambassador to Ecuador, Charles-Michel Geurts, explained: “Eurocine promotes not only art and the development of inclusive exchange spaces, but also dialogue between Europe and Ecuador, natural partners linked by historical, social and, above all, ties. Everything for his commitment to principles and values such as democracy, respect and tolerance.”
