Midnight Sun Film Festival opens in Finnish Lapland

Guests include veteran director John Boorman

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The 24th Midnight Sun Film Festival opens in Sodankylä in Finnish Lapland today.
     
International director guests attending this year's event include the celebrated British veteran director John Boorman, and Samira Makhmalbaf, a highly-touted young director from Iran, as well as the most well-known Kazakhstanian filmmaker Sergei Dvortsevoi, and Fatih Akin, a German film director of Turkish descent.
     
A total of nine films directed by John Boorman will be screened at the Sodankylä event.
      As a director Boorman has moved from one genre to another: from documentaries to fiction, from detective stories to war movies, and from horror to science fiction.
      In addition to the classic Point Blank (1967), Boorman’s five decades of filmmaking include Deliverance (1972), Hope and Glory (1987), The General (1998), and The Tiger’s Tail (2006).
     
The gems of new cinema will feature Turkish modern films as well as some other new films, including Hunger (2008), the first film by the British filmmaker Steve McQueen, telling the story of the IRA activist Bobby Sands.
     
The new film The Limits of Control (2009) directed by American Jim Jarmusch will be premièred at the festival on Friday June 12th.
      The world première of Earth Evocation (2009) by Finnish filmmakers Markku Lehmuskallio and Anastasia Lapsui is scheduled for Saturday June 13th.
      Charles Chaplin’s silent film The Gold Rush (1925) accompanied by the Oulu Symphony Orchestra is to culminate the festival in traditional fashion.
     
The Midnight Sun Film Festival is celebrated this year from June 10th to June 14th.
      Full details of the programme from the links.


Links:
  Midnight Sun Film Festival 2009
  John Boorman (Wikipedia)
  John Boorman on the IMDB

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