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Finland’s annual film bash, Love & Anarchy — more formally known as the Helsinki International Film Festival — wrapped a record-breaking 26th edition Sunday.
An “exceptionally wide program” that included 180 full-length and over 160 short films from more than 50 countries and 470 screenings, drew 58,000 visitors.
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Industry sidebar, the Finnish Film Affair, doubled to 300 its number of international filmmakers, sales agents, distributors, festival officials and guests, with debates, panels and works-in-progress on show.
Public screenings in the FFA’s Spotlight section attracted 4,000 viewers with a Finnish gala film screening of Heart of a Lion, Dome Karukoski’s study of a neo-Nazi who falls in love with a woman who has a child from an earlier relationship with a black immigrant, and Pirjo Honkasalo’s monochrome film noir Concrete Night.
In a festival that remains all about audience, the most popular films included sell-out screenings of opening film, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Cannes sensation, Blue Is the Warmest Color and a gala showing of Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster.
Other audience favorites included Joshua Oppenheimer’s acclaimed documentary The Act of Killing – Director’s Cut, which had two screenings in addition to the three originally planned.
The festival closes late Sunday with a sold-out screening of Frances Ha by Noah Baumbach.
The audience award winning film was Pablo Larrain’s No, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the ad man who plans a TV campaign to end the Pinochet dictatorship.
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