The 2016 Ljubljana International Film Festival - Liffe will officially open on the 9th of November with the screening of Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski’s 11 Minutes. The film director himself will be presented in detail in the Homage festival section. Romanian film will once again be in this year’s Focus section. It was also in focus in 2007 and this year the selection is entitled Romanian Film 2.0. This year’s Retrospective secion is dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Slovenian Cinematheque. Ten films from the Perspective section will compete for the festival main prize - the Kingfisher.

The supporting film on the opening night of this year’s Liffe will be All These Voices – a short movie directed by David Henry Gerson. Slovenian Martin Horvat features as co-scriptwriter in the short film. The short film won this year’s Student Academy Award, given out by the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Homage section will feature four of Skolimowki’s films shot in Poland, which strongly influenced the country’s New Wave, and three other films he made after fleeing to the West.

The core of the festival remains to be the Perspectives section - a selection of films made by promising (but not necessarily very young) directors competing for the Kingfisher Prize. Some of the films in the section present debut films for their directors. Germany’s 24 Weeks (directed by Anne Zohra Berrached) discusses the question of abortion under difficult circumstances, while the Croatian drama Quit Staring at My Plate portrays a young woman who takes charge as head of the family following a family tragedy. The only animated film in the section, Red Turtle (directed by Michael Dudok de Wit), presents the first international co-production for the renowned Japanese animation film studio Ghibli.

Serbia’s Humidity (directed by Nikola Ljuca) brings an unrelenting portrayal of modern society. Legendary actress Mirjana Karanović will surely tempt many to go the cinema – at the age of 59 A Good Wife is her first feature film as director.

Festival director Simon Popek says a specialty of this year’s competition program is the "hallucinative" Porto, a movie from the U.S-based Portuguese director Gabe Klinger, recorded on a 35mm film.

Ana Jurc; translated by K. J.