MUMBAI: The third edition of the Odessa International Film Festival (OIFF) will kick off on 13 July.
"We are doubling in size with each edition," festival‘s director Denis Ivanov said in a statement. "This year, we are inaugurating a new, 1,200 seat festival center, and we expect about 100,000 viewers to turn up," he added.
Among the highlights of the international competition are Sergei Loznitsa‘s V Tumane (In the Fog), a WWII drama; Garbage by American director Phil Volken, Poslednyaya Skazka Rity, (Rita‘s Last Fairy Tale) by Russian actress/director/screenwriter Renata Litvinova and the teenage drama Dollhouse by Irish director Kirsten Sheridan.
"Apart from the international competition, the festival would feature a Ukrainian national competition and about half a dozen special programmes including French Panorama and Lost World: Ukrainian Cinema of the Early 1990s.
OIFF is also holding a retrospective of movies by Todd Solondz, who is expected to show up in Odessa. The festival‘s professional program is to be drastically expanded, compared to last year. "We are basically bringing in the entire Ukrainian film industry here," Ivanov commented.
The festival is to close on 21 July.