Gijon Film Festival unveils lineup (Variety)

Philippe Lioret’s “Welcome,” Dagur Kari’s “The Good Heart” and Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s “La Pivellina” will compete at the 47th Gijon Film Festival.

Maverick U.S. helmer Harmony Korine, a fest regular, will receive a tribute and a career retro. Korine will attend Gijon and present his latest celebration of bad taste, “Trash Humpers.”

Gijon, which runs Nov. 19-28, closes with Cruz Angeles’ “Don’t Let Me Drown,” a “Romeo and Juliet”-like story about two high school teens in the Bronx after 9/11.

Well received at Berlin, “Welcome” revolves around a young Iraqi Kurd trapped in France but determined to swim the Channel to a new life in England.

“The Good Heart,” sold by Wild Bunch, is directed by Iceland’s Dagur Kari (“Noi Albinoi”). Centered on a bartender training his substitute, a young homeless man, it was picked up by Alta Films for Spain at Toronto.

A Directors’ Fortnight player, “La Pivellina” recounts a woman circus worker’s temporary adoption of a 2-year-old girl.

Elsewhere, Gijon’s competish selection nails two key trends in specialty filmmaking: dramatic minimalism and darkly humored, off-kilter fare.

Both Masahiro Kobayashi’s lonely teen tale “Where Are You?” and “Between Two Worlds,” a mood poem from Sri Lanka’s Vimukthi Jayasundara, belong to the minimalist school.

“Frontier Blues,” from the Iran-born Babak Jalali, is a black-humored portrait of life in the Golestan province of Iran.

Also competing is the wacky laffer “The Last Days of Emma Blank,” from Dutch auteur Alex van Warmerdam; Romanian Bobby Paunescu’s offbeat immigration story “Francesca”; and a quirky small-town 1960s noir that tips its hat to the Coen brothers, Uruguayan Alvaro Brechner’s “Bad Day to Go Fishing.”

Pics join a bevy of already announced competition contenders that should yield some of Gijon’s most popular titles: from the U.S., Lynn Shelton’s “Humpday” and Josh and Benny Safdie’s “Go Get Some Rosemary”; and from France, Riad Sattouf’s “French Kissers” and Alain Guiraudie’s “The King of Escape.”

Competish is rounded out by Portuguese helmer Joao Pedro Rodrigues’ drag-queen meller “To Die Like a Man.”

Gijon favors U.S., Argentine films (Variety)

Fest opens with Clark Gregg's 'Choke'

By JOHN HOPEWELL

MADRID — U.S. indie pics and Argentine arthouse titles feature prominently in the lineup of the Gijon Film Festival, which unspools Nov. 20-29.

The fest opens with Clark Gregg’s “Choke,” which picked up a Sundance special jury prize, and closes with Alex Holdridge’s blind-date comedy, “In Search of a Midnight Kiss.”

The competition features three U.S. titles: “Ballast,” Lance Hammer’s Mississippi Delta family drama; Kelly Reichardt’s American Northwest roadmovie “Wendy and Lucy”; and Antonio Campos’ prep school dystopia, “Afterschool.”

Gijon’s competish underscores the strength of filmmaking in Argentina, with three key pics from the country running in the kudo contest.

In the lineup are “Liverpool,” Lisandro Alonso’s drama about the return of a sailor to Tierra del Fuego; “Salamandra,” Pablo Aguero’s feature debut, set in the expanses of Patagonia; and “A Week Alone,” Celina Murga’s study of well-off adolescents with time to kill.

Another Argentine pic, Lucrecia Martel’s contempo social allegory, “The Headless Woman,” screens out of competition.

Fest director Jose Luis Cienfuegos has cherrypicked some of the most admired left-of-field titles of the year.

These include some of Cannes’ top titles, such as “Waltz With Bashir,” Kazakh steppe courtship story “Tulpan,” which won Un Certain Regard, Belgian actor-helmer Bouli Lanners’ oddball road movie “Eldorado,” and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Cannes director winner, family drama “Three Monkeys.”

Gijon’s competition ranges far and wide, from another family drama, “9mm,” by Istanbul-born Taylan Barman, to Patrice Toye’s “Nowhere Man,” about a fortysomething husband who dreams of a different life, and Chilean Jose Luis Torres Leiva’s solitude tale “The Sky, The Earth and the Rain.”

Set on the Chilean coast near Valdivia, “Sky” is the third film in competition to use the stark, inhospitable landscapes of South America to suggest larger spiritual malaise.

Claire Denis’ Venice player “35 Shots of Rhum” and Sylvie Verheyde’s “Stella,” about a 70s working class ‘hood, round up Gijon’s Official Section.

Hannes Stohr’s “Berlin Calling,” tracking a DJ in the German capital, and New Zealander Gregory King’s redemption tale, “A Song of Good,” play out of competition.