International Competition 1

What films await in the first competition block? The contemplatively beautiful Portuguese film Small Town that won the Golden Bear at the last Berlinale. The Norwegian film Fanny about how life tastes at twenty five when parties and determination mingle with misses and loneliness. The French comedy Partner about a day on which a friendship was put to a hard test. Written/Unwritten presents a perfectly lifelike portrait of Romanian gipsies whose unwritten rules differ in many ways from the written laws and regulations but deserve no less respect for that fact alone. And finally there’s the Chinese film A Gentle Night with a multi-layered dramatic atmosphere and many aesthetic values that made it worthy of the Cannes Grand Prize, the Palme D’Or.