The sold out Nov. 18 screening of The Man Who Jumped Cars demonstrates the growing popularity of the European Union Film Festival, said Tom McSorley, executive director of the Canadian Film Institute.
“The fact that this festival has been going on for 26 years is pretty amazing for any cultural event to make it that long,” said McSorley, who is also a sessional film studies instructor at Carleton.
The popularity of the screening, which took place at the National Library and Archives, is a testament to the growth of the festival, particularly over the past five years, McSorley said.
“When the festival first started, it was quite modest because there were only nine or 10 countries in the European Union itself,” he said.
“Audiences began to come to the festival more and more because it was such an array of different kinds of films that never got distribution in Canada.”
The expansion of the European Union led to an increased variety of films presented, McSorley said. This year’s festival featured films from 25 member states.
The festival, organized by the Canadian Film Institute in partnership with different embassies, opened Nov. 17 and will run through Dec. 4.
The Man Who Jumped Cars follows a man’s journey as he walks from Berlin to South Germany in hopes of healing his best friend’s father.
The film’s cinematography showcases German landscapes, starting off in Berlin and transitioning into the quiet German countryside, with one scene focusing on the sunrise in the lush green fields.
While most of the festival’s films come from across the globe, many of them have a distinctly Canadian feel, said programmer Jerrett Zaroski, a Carleton film studies graduate who started working with the Canadian Film Institute following a practicum in his fourth year.
“It’s a very dumb comedy in many ways, the premise is very typical . . . American Pie, but it takes it in a different direction and handles it differently,” said Zaroski, describing the Finnish comedy Laplandian Odyssey, one of the many films set to be screened.
Ottawa has a real appetite for European cinema because it’s different from Hollywood productions, McSorley said.
“One of the goals of the festival is to of course celebrate European filmmaking, but to also present films that kind of expand the horizons . . . for audiences in terms of how films get made,” McSorley said.
