Beijing Film Fest reveals stellar jury for deja-vu competition

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Beijing International Film Festival has put together a festival of festivals-type competition selection with titles that have gathered awards at other events through the past year, Variety said.

The line-up will be judged by a powerhouse jury to be headed by John Woo. He is joined by Irish director Jim Sheridan, India’s “3 Idiots” screenwriter, Italian actress Maria Grazia Cucinotti, leading Chinese director Lu Chuan and Sinofile French director, scriptwriter and producer Philippe Muyl.

The festival will kick off with a screening of Christophe Gans’ “Beauty And The Beast,” starring Vincent Cassel and Lea Seydoux.

Beijing, now in its fourth year, has been a jumping off point for high level East-West meetings. This year’s seminar of co-production will involve Oliver Stone, Alfonso Cuarón, director of Gravity; Christopher Dodd, president of the Motion Picture Association of America; Frederick Huntsberry, COO of Paramount Pictures; Russian director Timur Bekmambetov and Peter Ziering, British producer.

Another seminar on film creativity will involve will include Jean-Jacques Annaud,; Peggy Chiao, Taiwanese film professor and producer and Chinese writer-director Xue Xiaolu.

A high-powered seminar on film beauty, focusing particularly on animation will involve the U.K.’s Peter Lord Peter Lord, “Rio” director Carlos Saldanha, producer Peter Del Vecho and visual effects specialist Dale Mayeda of “Frozen,” Prof. Sun Lijun, president of the Beijing Film Academy Institute of the Art of Animation, and David Bai, general project manager of Dargaud China.

The competition line-up includes “A Promise,” by Patrice Leconte (France); “Attila Marcel” by Sylvain Chomet (France); “Carmen” by Doru Nitescu (Romania); “Hope,” by Lee Jun-ik (South Korea); “Ilo Ilo” by Anthony Chen (Singapore); “In Bloom” by Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross (Georgia); “Matterhorn” by Diederik Ebbinge (The Netherlands), “Siddharth” by Richie Mehta (Canada-India); “The Enemy Within’” by Yorgos Tsemberopoulos (Greece); “The Rocket” by Kim Mordaunt (Australia-Laos); “Third Person” by Paul Haggis (Belgium); “Zoran, My Nephew the Idiot,” Matteo Oleotto (Italy); “The Grandmaster” by Wong Kar-wai (Hong Kong-China); “American Dreams In China,” by Peter Chan.