The European Union Film Festival 2010

The European Union Film Festival offers a unique opportunity to discover new and previously unreleased European films selected by Embassies, Consulates and Cultural Centres of the EU member countries present in the three participating Canadian cities: Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto. The selected films represent the richness and diversity of these countries’ cinematographies.

The European Union Film Festival is organized thanks to the partnership between the European Union and its Member States on the one hand, and the Canadian Institute of Film, Library and Archives Canada, Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver, and private partners in Toronto, on the other.

This year, the Festival is presided by the Embassy of Belgium and led by the Canadian Institute of Film and Pacific Cinematheque.

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The 25th EUFF is presided by the Belgian presidency and will run from Thursday, November 18 to Sunday, December 5, 2010 in the Auditorium of the Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa.

The French film presented this year will be:

Of Gods and Men (Des Hommes et des Dieux)
by Xavier Beauvois

Grand prix of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival
French official selection for the 2011 Academy Awards
with Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale
more than 2 million tickets sold in France in 2010

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Film Screening in OTTAWA
Wednesday, November 24, 2010 at 7:00 pm
at the Auditorium of the Library and Archives Canada
screening followed by a cocktail reception

French feature-length film – Drama – Length: 2 hours – year of production: 2010 – with English subtitles.
From the director of The Young Lieutenant (Du Petit Lieutenant) and Selon Mathieu - The film portrays the last months in the lives of Trappist monks of the Tibhirine monastery in Algeria before their death in 1996. The Canadian film release is scheduled for March 2011, and the distribution company is Mongrel Media.

Synopsis

A monastery high in the mountains of the Algerian Atlas, some time in the 1990s. A group of French Cisterian monks lives in harmony with their Muslim brothers. When a group of foreign workers are massacred by an Islamist group, terror slowly takes hold of the region. The army offers to provide protection, but the monks refuse. To stay or to leave? Despite the ever-growing danger that surrounds them, the monks are determined to stay – whatever the cost – as their resolve grows stronger day by day…

The film is loosely based on the lives of Cistercian monks from the Monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria from 1993 until their kidnapping in 1996.

Press Conference at the Embassy of Belgium scheduled for Tuesday, November 9 at 12:30 pm.