Giorgio Gosetti (left) and Ulrich Thomsen.
Giorgio Gosetti, director of Venice Days, has been appointed the Director of the New Visions Programme at RIFF and Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen has accepted a seat on the jury. RIFF (Reykjavik International Film Festival) will take place from September 22 to October 2.
Giorgio Gosetti
Gosetti replaces Founding Artistic Director Dimitri Eipides who has taken on the directorship of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival as well as his programming duties in Toronto and Montreal.
Gosetti will be responsible for New Visions, the main section of the festival and will act as a General Program Advisor for the other programs. RIFF presents approximately 100 features from 40 countries in 10 programs. Gosetti is a journalist, critic, author and organizer of cultural events for the past 35 years. He also founded European film daily Cineuropa.
Says RIFF director Hronn Marinosdottir:
“We are very honoured to work with Giorgio Gosetti, one of the finest film programmers in the world and welcome him to an enthusiastic public awaiting his choices for the festival. We are also deeply indebted to the incomparable Dimitri Eipides who brought his superb programming skills to a fledgling festival and made it a great success.“
Ulrich Thomsen
Ulrich Thomsen, one of Denmark’s most acclaimed actors, turned in a breakthrough role in Tomas Vinterberg’s 1998 dogma-film sensation The Celebration (Festen) and has been kept busy with work in Denmark as well as in international productions ever since. Among his best-known Danish films are Blinkende Lygter and Brødre (remade by Jim Sheridan as Brothers, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire) and on the global scene Thomsen has featured in films like Ridley Scott’s The Kingdom of Heaven, Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow’s The Weight of Water, and Tom Tykwer’s The International.
For the past 7 years, RIFF has presented over 1,000 films, invited over 800 guests and honoured 9 distinguished film personalities (Jim Jarmusch, Milos Forman, Costa-Gavras, Aki Kaurismaaki, Abbas Kiarostami, Shirin Neshat, Atom Egoyan, Hanna Schygulla and Aleksandr Sokurov). The annual event which takes place at the end of September each year now attracts close to 10% of the Icelandic population.
