Everything is ready for the 8th STIFF Festival

The films are ready, the guests have arrived, projectors are warmed up and our excitement is high – just one last check and we are ready to open the 8th edition of the Student International Film Festival tomorrow at 19:00h in Art-kino cinema.

An extended film-lovers weekend filled with 38 films from 17 countries awaits – our jury will choose the best fiction, animated, and documentary film, and the audience will give out an Audience Choice Award; and all of us together will have a chance to move away from our digital existence and dive into a full-blooded offline festival edition.

The festival will open with Thunders, the first of ten program slots this year bringing us rays of light and hope through four films. All The Things I’ll Never Tell You (Bela Bračko-Milešević) is a collage of old photographs, imagined memories, and the examination of the emotions brought about by the lack of communication amid generations that enables the author to reconstruct the pater familias.

Then Comes The Evening (Maja Novaković) is a cinema verite styled voyage to the summits of eastern Bosnian mountains where we plunge into the quotidian haiku. This poetic documentary provides us with a slice of the quiet life led by two elderly women, a life spent in dedication to coexistence with nature. Cockpera (Kata Gugić) is a humorous animation that takes cues from the tales of Aesopus. To the more cunning shall go the spoils of this opera duel. Open Your Mouth (Tamara Mamon) centers around the nonfictional coming-of-age story of three boys set in the rift between the Arabic and Jewish cultures. The school quire and the camaraderie pave the way towards new horizons for the trio.

Film treats go best with a side of the international exhibition In Trasmission curated by Elena Apostolovski that will have an opening on Friday, 5.11. at 21:30h at the Gallery SKC. The exhibition questions corporeality and the ways in which it is formed/deformed through time, virtual and physical space, how it intertwines with ideologies. Artworks explore bodies in digital engagement as an extension of human relations and acknowledge human perception that enables pleasure, pain, and spending time in spaces of imagination.

The program Stitches will bring us together in a conversation with film directors in the Art-kino foyer and open up different themes and perspectives: Round And Round We Go (Saturday, 14:00h) will gather Croatian animators Kata Gugić (Cockpera), Sunčana Brkulj (The Tower) and Natko Stipaničev (Arka); the same day at 21:30h Anja Koprivšek (Between Summers), Bojan Radanović (Letters) and Sara Grgurić (In The Woods) will talk about intimate relationships as catalysts of film story in the program Touches, and the program Between Glances (Sunday, 15:00h) is dedicated to documentary filmmaking and the relationship of directors and their protagonists, hosting Jasmina Beširević (Now I Am Irena) and Nikola Stojanović (Cornelian Cherries).

We invite you to take this opportunity to dive into the world of student and debutant films that found their way to our festival despite all the difficulties the world is facing right now.

The program will be held in Art-kino cinema and Gallery SKC and is completely free for all visitors. STIFF will respect current epidemiological measures prescribing the wearing of protective face masks in all closed spaces, keeping a physical distance, and hands disinfection.

Student International Film Festival – STIFF was produced in 2014. by Filmaktiv and Student Culture Centre of the University of Rijeka (SKC) with the goal of presenting the best of current student and debutant film production in the world.

STIFF  is supported by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, City of Rijeka, Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, University of Rijeka, the “Kultura nova” Foundation,  and National Foundation for Civil Society Development.