So far in your career you have played roles of unusual, slightly eccentric, but very striking characters such as Amelie Poulain in Amelie, Coco Chanel in Coco Before Chanel and Irene in Priceless. How do you choose your roles? For me it is a very instinctive choice - the part somehow comes in the right moment. I like parts that are unusual and present a challenge. I like characters that are not the same at the end of their story as they were at the beginning, that change and develop. I like the process and how the events enrich them. You once said that you don't dream of a Hollywood career? Is this still the case and why? Is European, French, film your “home”? I don’t dream of a Hollywood career because it comes with a life that might not be good for me. Also, it’s a huge industry and I don’t really think that I would fit into those kinds of projects. I think European movies are my home, but I like to “travel” to different cinemas. You have been at Kustendorf for two days. What are your impressions of the festival? It’s great! Kustendorf is very unique and original; it has a very rare spirit in a very authentic place. It’s great that young directors can be honored and have the opportunity to show us their work while meeting each other and having fun. It’s a very cool place and so is the area. The village is wonderful. It’s a very special festival and I am very happy to discover it.

Monica Bellucci, a special guest of 6th Kustendorf International Film and Music Festival arrived to Mecavnik in the afternoon hours on the fourth festival day. The famed Italian actress is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful women in the world. Following a successful modeling career, Bellucci starred in several movies including The Apartment – a French film made in 1996 – which was her first big acting success and brought her a nomination for the Cesar Award for Most Promising Actress. She gained world fame portraying the lead role in Giuseppe Tornatore’s Italian film Malena (2000). Monica Bellucci acted in numerous films most notably, Dobermann (1997), Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), Asterix and Obelix Meet Cleopatra (2002), Irreversible (2002), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003), The Passion of the Christ (2004), Sheitan (2006), Shoot ‘Em Up (2007), Don’t Look Back (2009), and The Whistleblower (2010).  Monica Bellucci will be a guest of Kustendorf 2013 for the next few days. 

workshop about Kieslowski with Oleg Jeknić The retrospective of Krzysztof Kieslowski movies was continued today with a screening of A Short Film About Killing and a workshop by Oleg Jeknić, a professor of film history and theory in Belgrade. Given that a large part of contestants and guests of the festival comes from countries outside of Europe, the start of the workshop was the right moment to introduce everyone to the Polish geopolitical position and history that have an influence on the art from that country. Jeknić named several historical moments that were, according to him, particularly important for understanding the context in which Kieslowski created movies. These events include Stalin’s death – after which many Polish filmmakers stepped onto the scene for the first time – the dictatorship of General Jaruzelski, and the subsequent flourishing of Polish cinematography during which Kieslowski’s opus came about. Jeknić described 1980’s Poland as an “Eastern European star on the rise.” Jeknić described in great detail the spirit of the times in Europe behind the Iron Curtain of the 80s, using his personal experience of growing up in socialist Yugoslavia as a starting point. He added that Kieslowski was then accepted as a filmmaker who depicts the reality of the whole of Eastern Europe. According to him, the common characteristic of that entire region is the fact that all things have to do with politics. Jeknić argued that Kieslowski’s whole film opus represents the transition from the political nature of the world in his first films to the attempt to free himself from that heritage through spirituality in his later works. Jeknić’s claim interested the participants of the workshop and sparked conversation. During the conversation, Jeknić presented participants an elementary psychological portrait of Kieslowski, some of his filmographies, and afterwards he introduced them to the theses of noted theorists who wrote and thought about his work. According to Jeknić, Kieslowski’s philosophical position can most accurately be labeled as subjectivism. In other words, he believes that the world can only be regarded subjectively, with a personal perspective, for it is impossible to be understood in its totality. That Eastern European subjectivism, according to Jeknić’s words, begins as a response to the communist regime’s attempts to introduce collectivism as a way of life. The workshop ended with a collaborative analysis of scenes from A Short Film About Killing. A Short Film About Killing began because Kieslowski developed Thou Shall Not Kill, the fifth episode of his Decalogue series that achieved cult status, into a full-length feature in 1988. The movie won numerous awards among which are the Jury Award and the FIPRESCI Award in Cannes in 1988 as well as the European Film Academy’s award for Best Film. 

workshop with Aleksey Balabanov The movie Me Too by the cult Russian director Aleksey Balabanov was shown on the third day of the festival. Following the screening, Balabanov held a workshop that almost resembled a performance and that showed participants how much an artist can resemble the art he creates. Aleksey Balabanov answered the students’ questions in the manner and style of characters from his recent films. Terse - due to the brevity with which he spoke and which often reached the quality of a zen koan. Blasphemous – when he was asked about the influence of Stalker on his most recent film Me Too, he responded by saying that he does not like Andei Tartovsky’s movies. Witty – after the most detailed answers that he gave, he added that he didn’t understand the question that was asked. Sententious – he replied to the last question about what piece of advice he would give to film makers in a simple sentence: “Try to make good movies!” Aleksey Balabanov did not want to elaborate on his old movies, nor did anyone dare ask him what he would work on in the future. His lengthiest answers were to questions regarding his latest film. He described the production design of a movie as a discovered object, saying that this movie began from a desire to make a movie in the abandoned and torn down quarters of the small city of Bezetska, adding 

Your movie, Beasts of the Southern Wild, that was screened last night won the Golden Camera Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012, the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and is now nominated for an Oscar for Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. Did you expect this and how has this affected you? Has anything changed in your life? We definitely didn't expect anything. This film was made by a bunch of people who were largely doing it for the first time. In that situation, you think ‘this is the first and last time I’ll ever make a movie, this is a disaster and they’ll run me out of the country.’ But now it’s done and I’ve have the craziest year of my life – I spent the entire year in planes and hotels and I’ve seen the world, which was amazing. But certainly the biggest change is that I know I get to go home and keep on making movies, and that was not the feeling we had when we were making the film, so that’s probably the most exciting thing.  At yesterday’s workshop you mentioned that you were inspired in a way by Kusturica’s movie Underground. What do you and Emir have in common in your cinematic poetry? People ask me all the time about fantasy and reality and mixing them. The way that he does it is the way that I aspire to do it. I try to tell these stories that are folktales and myths yet ground them in reality; not tell fantastical tales from another planet but to tell them rooted in experience with real people. What I try to take from him the most, and the thing that really inspired me the most when I saw his films was that you see real joy happening on screen. It’s not signifiers of joy; it doesn’t feel like people are pretending, it feels like the experience is happening live and he’s capturing spontaneous moments that will never happen again – they can only happen because they’ve been created for the film. That energy, and the wildness that he manages to get on the screen is what made me want to do this, because that’s how I want to live. I want to live the way that I want and try to capture that, I think that he’s done that in his career and that is inspiring.   This is your first time at Kustendorf. How has your experience here affected you? How do you like it and how does it compare to other festivals? This is the best film festival I’ve ever been to; it’s not even close to any other festival. A lot of times the impulse you get when you’re making films is that you want to create a new world, create something that doesn’t exist. Kusturica has done that not just in his films but there’s a place that exists that’s completely utopian. This is a place that celebrates film and music and has a kind of atmosphere that makes this feel like a better world than the one that we live in on a day-to-day basis. To be able to walk into that is incredible. My new goal in life is that someday I will be able to invite Emir to my compound in Louisiana that I created because this is exactly what I want to do with my life.