KURJA POLT 7: IN RATIONS (»NA OBROKE«)

KURJA POLT Genre Film Festival returns! But served in rations…

When we were forced to cancel the festival in mid-March, our 7th edition – originally planned for April 14 to 19 – was ready to go. Our programme leaflets were fresh from the printers, our festival guests were printing their plane tickets, even the first film prints had already arrived. The festival team poured months and months of enthusiasm, hard work and dedication into preparing the 2020 festival. But as much as we hoped and want, we simply cannot organize the festival in its original scope and format once again this year. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our funding, the availability of our team and festival venues, and we cannot foresee when our international guests will be able to travel safely and surely.

Without them – our guest filmmakers, musicians, film scholars and curators – a crucial part of our programme cannot come to life. We have therefore decided to postpone all retrospective and specialty programmes which demand the presence of our international guests to our next edition in April 2021. These include the film programme sections Retrospective: Beyond the Uncanny, Focus: Africa and Endemic, as well the Cult Film Conference and FOKN Bois LIVE!

Because we miss our audience dearly and yearn to present it with amazing genre creations, we will do so in a manner that befits and reflects our current reality in this turbulent year. From July to December 2020 we will be dishing our KURJA POLT In Rations – through individual screenings of our Contemporary films, a few flashes from our Retrospective programmes, and adding a new title to boot. We will be kindly hosted by our fellow festivals and various special programmes of our cinematic venues Kinodvor and Slovenska kinoteka.

We commence this serial edition on Thursday, July 9 at 21:30 in Kinodvor with J-P Valkeapää’s darkly humorous and deliciously painful BDSM love story Dogs Don’t Wear Pants (Koirat eivät käytä housuja, 2019) which enraptured cinephile audiences and critics across the fantastic film festival landscape.

The programme will be announced in rations as well, at kurjapolt.org and www.facebook.com/kurjapolt.

The KURJA POLT Festival Team

Wishing you all well!