Tirana Film Festival to hold 12th edition

TIRANA, Oct. 23 – Hundreds of feature and short film, documentaries and animated movies from all the world have been shortlisted to participate in this year’s twelfth edition of the Tirana International Film Festival scheduled to be held early next November.
“This twelfth edition of TIFF brings several important changes to its previous years. For the fifth time, TIFF announces a feature film competition along with its prestigious shorts program. TIFF also extends its program to seven days, November 3 to 9 in order to encompass not only the competing shorts and features but to allow for retrospectives, seminars, classes, press events and special presentations at theatres all over the Albanian capital,” organizers say.
All the daily programs of the TIFF festival combine features and short film of all formats and genres – fiction, documentary, animation and experimental. Open to any filmmaker from around the world, TIFF showcases new cinematic work by established directors with international reputations as well as work by talented students and young artists.
TIFF provides time in its daily schedule for classes and seminars with professionals in the motion picture industry geared for Albanian students of the cinema and emerging filmmakers.
The aim of the Tirana International Film Festival is to create a meeting point for film artists and cinema enthusiasts from Albania, the Balkans and the entire world to come together and share their linked passion and knowledge of the motion picture art form, organizers say.
Two juries composed of leading film writers, directors and critics will evaluate and then select the best TIFF film, best Balkan film, best short film, best animated film and best documentary, best director, best actor and actress.
In last year’s edition, “Seven Lucky Gods,” a movie directed by UK’s Jamil Dehlavi and starring Albanian writer Nik Xhelilaj was announced the best film in the Tirana International Film Festival. The movie starring Xhelilaj, famous for his “The Albanian” movie in 2010 which made him one of Europe’s Shooting Stars in the 2011 Berlin film festival, is about an illegal immigrant from Albania who infiltrates the lives of a group of Londoners with devastating consequences.
The first and only international cinema festival of its kind in Albania, TIFF was established in 2003 showcasing movies competing in four categories including feature films, short-films, the Digiart, TV short film competition, and the Albanian short-film competition.