SCREENING AT BERLIN
January 19th 2009 16:51
MARY AND MAX, the debut feature film from Adam Elliot, Academy Award winning Director of short Harvie Crumpet, has been selected to screen in the Generation 14plus section at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival.
MARY AND MAX will be in competition amongst 27 features from 25 countries selected in total for Generation 14plus section. The Generation 14plus programme will open on February 6, 2009.
Last year, Australian film The Black Balloon premiered in the Generation 14 strand at the Berlin Film Festival and went on to be the Australian box-office hit of the year.
This announcement came on the eve of the world premiere of MARY AND MAX which took place at the opening of this year's Sundance Film Festival, the largest independent cinema festival in the U.S on January 15, the first time an Australian film has been given this honour.
Spanning 20 years and 2 continents, MARY AND MAX is a simple tale of pen-friendship between two very different people; Mary Dinkle, a chubby lonely eight year old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max Horovitz, a 44 year old, severely obese, Jewish man with Asperger's Syndrome living in the chaos of New York. Mary and Max is innocent but not naive, as it takes us on a journey that explores friendship, autism, taxidermy, psychiatry, alcoholism, where babies come from, obesity, kleptomania, sexual difference, trust, copulating dogs, religious difference, agoraphobia and much much more
The film is scheduled for Australian release mid April.
www.maryandmax.com.
The Generation Kplus section, a competition for feature and short films aimed at children from the age of four years and over, will screen Ali & the Ball (d: Alex Holmes), Netherland Dwarf (d: David Michôd) and Jerrycan (d: Julius Avery).
Ali & the Ball is the story about life behind razor wire, told through the eyes of a child. The film has had much success domestically winning the 2008 Dendy Award for Best Short Fiction and was also selected for the 2008 Melbourne International Film Festival.
Netherland Dwarf will screen in Berlin following its outing in the shorts competition at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
The film follows the lives of Harry and his father. Harry really wants a rabbit. Harry’s dad really wants his wife back. And somehow in the middle of all this wanting, they’ve forgotten that they already have each other.
Jerrycan screens in Berlin following the film’s official selection at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, where it was awarded the Jury Prize – Short Film. Five bored kids with nothing to do decide to blow something up. Paper, scissors, rock seals the fate of Nathan, who risks everything after he is bullied into making a life and death decision.
Two short films are also featuring as part of the Generation 14plus program, Tomorrow (d: Simon Portus) and Summer Breaks (d: Sean Kruck).
Summer Breaks deals with the day to day lives of teenagers while Tomorrow looks at the connection between a young teenage girl from the bush and an businesswoman from the city.
Summer Breaks won the Rouben Mamoulian Award at the 20th annual Dendy Awards for Australian short films in 2008. It was recently selected for the 2009 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.
Films selected for the Generation section will compete for the Crystal Bear Awards, which are awarded to the best feature and short film in the Kplus and 14plus sections.
The Berlin International Film Festival runs 5 – 15 February 2009. The complete program will be finalised by 27 January 2009.
Source: Lantern Group.
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SimonC
