Budapest picked as 2024 Taipei Film Festival's 'City in Focus'

Taipei, April 26 (CNA) The Hungarian capital of Budapest was announced on Friday as the 2024 Taipei Film Festival's "City in Focus," with 20 films to be screened as a "condensed history" of Hungary's cinematic scene, according to the organizers.

The film festival's "themed city" programming is returning this year, the event's organizers -- the Taipei City government, Taipei Culture Foundation and Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs -- said in a statement Friday, after the concept was dropped in 2016 when the festival was revamped.

Among the 20 films are four newer films, including "Semmelweis," Hungary's biggest box office hit in the last five years that tells the story of physician Ignaz Semmelweis who discovered the cause of puerperal fever and introduced antisepsis into medical practice in the 19th century.

Another one is Katalin Moldovai's feature debut "Without Air" that takes on the conservative Hungarian government in her depiction of a high school teacher accused of promoting homosexual values to her students.

Meanwhile, 16 New Wave films will be screened that reflected life under the authoritarian regime of the Cold War, including films made by the Balázs Béla Studio from the 1960s to 1980s, the organizers said.

Hungarian director Béla Tarr was named as this year's "Filmmaker in Focus," with his first two feature films -- "Family Nest" (1979) and "The Outsider" (1982) -- and his 2011 film "The Turin Horse" to be shown during the festival, the organizers said.

"The Outsider" is one of only two Tarr films in color and first to hit the big screen in Taiwan 20 years ago, while "The Turin Horse" is the last work he directed before he announced his retirement from directing feature-length films.

The 68-year-old Tarr is known for "his highly styled long shots" aimed at showing the repetitive, boring and repressed daily lives of people living in the bottom of the society, the organizers said.

For instance, Tarr made "The Turin Horse," a film of more than two and a half hours, in 30 shots to show six days of the lives of an old horse, an elderly father, and his daughter on a desolate farm with an approaching storm, the festival organizers said.

The organizers said they will screen the recently digitally restored version of "Family Nest" and "The Outsider" during the festival.

Themed cities first became a part of the film festival's programming in its fourth edition held in 2002, with Paris and Prague being featured that year, followed by Kyoto and Melbourne in 2003.

Other featured cities included Berlin, Stockholm, Warsaw, Lisbon, and in 2010, Brazil, was named by the film festival to highlight movies from the South American country. The city/country-centered programming was dropped in 2016.

The organizers are expected to announce in the coming days other programs for this year's festival, which runs from June 21 to July 2. The Taipei Film Awards coinciding with the festival will be held on July 6.

No information regarding ticket sales has been announced.