Welcome to the ninth edition of the Umeå European Film Festival!
Umeå European Film Festival is an annual film festival run by the non-profit Art House Cinema Folkets Bio Umeå. During 6 days we show 81 films spread over 100 scheduled screenings. In addition, the festival week is always combined with quizzes, live music, sing alongs and conversations with filmmakers and industry professionals. We strive to create a broad program for both adults and children and in this program magazine you can find your favorite films.
Last year we were happy that we could even hold a film festival and after several years of pandemic and restrictions, this year’s edition of UEFF feels extra special. With that joy, however, world politics is reminded in the content of our program. We open the festival with the talked about and celebrated film Holy Spider, a film that criticizes the misogynistic structures of Iranian society. Several of this year’s film titles mirror and reflect on agriculture and cultivation, in the Turkish film Commitment Hasan, the authorities plan to run a wire straight through Hasan’s farm and destroy his fruit trees. We will show two of Sune Jonsson’s ethnological films when we take on the challenge of running an outdoor cinema on Rådhustorget, the author and journalist Arne Müller is invited to talk about the possibilities of local food production and self-sufficiency. Put on your warm clothes!
Ukraine’s entry to the Oscars, Klondike, is a hit in Donetsk 2014. It is about the couple Irka and Tolik who on July 17th receive parts of the downed passenger plane Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in their garden. The animated feature film The Crossing is a story about director Florence Miailhe’s grandmother’s escape from Odessa in Ukraine in 1905 when violent fighting broke out in the city with the Russian Revolution.The European film is something we are passionate about and whose limitations and conditions we constantly challenge. This year we are part of the European Film Month, which is a concept created by European Cinemas, one of several ways to unite and strengthen culture in Europe.
This year’s festival also highlights one of Sweden’s most interesting filmmakers: Mia Engberg. During the festival week, you have the chance to immerse yourself in her artistry through the retrospective that we have put together. Mia Engberg also visits the festival and holds a conversation on Saturday evening after the screening of Belleville Baby. During the festival, we have more guests on the program who will hold conversations in connection with the screenings.
We also put a little extra focus on care and care in the later part of life. Three newly produced and innovative documentary films are nominated for our Rödspoven film grant, with perspectives both from the elderly, on care staff and relatives. We are also awarding the Storspoven for the ninth time, a scholarship that goes to the best film in the section Perspective from the North – where all films have a connection to northern Sweden in some way.
For those interested in music, we offer three music films. The classic Control about Joy Division’s front man Ian Curtis, A Symphony of Noise: Matthew Herbert’s Revolution and the new documentary film Jag spellar mig about Mattias Alkberg. Alkberg, who will also be on stage during our film party, shortly after the screening of the film.
Film as a medium has the special advantage of being both educational and entertaining, it can create encounters and new contexts. It is a way to get to new places and get stories about different human destinies. At the Umeå European Film Festival, you can watch a movie in a cinema just like usual, but you can also watch a movie while eating dinner, while having a beer or why not when you want to join a group of friends to sing to a musical .
-Mia Rogersdotter Gran