Videos: BIFF Unveils Trio Of Festival Highlights

The Bermuda International Film Festival has unveiled three highlights of the upcoming event, the acclaimed productions which have been selected as the special opening, centrepiece and closing night screenings.

In opening film “Ginger and Rosa”, two teenage girls, best friends since they were toddlers, are driven apart by a scandalous betrayal in 1962 London.

Sally Potter has crafted an intimate, riveting coming-of-age story—one made all the more powerful by a revelatory performance by Elle Fanning as the bright, anxious Ginger, increasingly affected by both the misery of her parents [deftly played by Alessandro Nivola and Christina Hendricks] and the era’s all-too-real fears of nuclear destruction.

As her private dramas unfold against the backdrop of broader historical terrors, Ginger proves to be one of cinema’s most fascinating and formidable young heroines.

Talented newcomer Alice Englert, the daughter of filmmaker Jane Campion, makes her impressive feature film debut as the troubled Rosa.

“Ginger and Rosa” screens at 7:00 pm on Friday, Apr 12 at the Liberty Theatre.

“Ginger and Rosa” trailer

This year BIFF is following in the footsteps of many great international film festivals and marking the middle of festival week with a Centrepiece Film.

“Unfinished Song” is a touching and joyful story that brings together two icons of British cinema, Vanessa Redgrave and Terence Stamp, and a new generation of talent represented by the effervescent and always impressive Gemma Arterton.

Arthur [Stamp] is not an easy man to warm to. Grumpy and awkward at the best of times, he’s reached a point in his life so grim there seems little reason to smile anymore: his beloved wife Marion [Redgrave] is terminally ill.

The indomitable Marion, however, refuses to let her condition get her down, and she continues to take great pleasure in singing with the somewhat unconventional local seniors’ choir.

“Unfinished Song” screens at the Liberty Theatre on Monday, April 15 at 7:00 pm.

“Unfinished Song” trailer

Closing film “The Girl Most Likely” takes as its theme former American President Calvin Coolidge’s observation that his country’s most common commodity is unrealised potential.

Few of us can claim not to possess it, but it takes a special sort of underachiever to match the feats of Imogene [Kristen Wiig], a playwright once thought to be destined for greatness, but who has spent most of her twenties and thirties frittering away her talent and opportunities.

As Imogene begins, she’s just about hit bottom, having staged a suicide attempt in a desperate bid to hold on to her philandering boyfriend — it’s about the only thing she’s staged in a very long time. And it’s not a hit.

Things can only go up from here, and they do in this wildly quirky and weirdly optimistic comic character study.

After her fake suicide attempt, Imogene is remanded to the custody of her mother [Annette Bening], a blowsy, overbearing gambling addict with a friendly but somewhat seedy goof of a boyfriend [Matt Dillon] who claims to be working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

This unexpected homecoming forces Imogene to confront her lingering feelings about her long-dead father, but it also finds her developing a surprising intimacy with her mother’s lodger, the much-younger Lee [Darren Criss], a singer currently exhibiting his talents in a Backstreet Boys cover band. Lee would seem anything but substantial on the surface, yet his sincerity and intelligence is arresting, and he may be just what the doctor ordered for our recovering heroine.

“The Girl Most Likely” screens at 7:00 pm on Thursday, April 18 at the Liberty Theatre.

Kristen Wiig and Christopher Fitzgerald discuss “The Girl Most Likely” at Toronto film festival

BIFF 2013 runs from Friday, April 12-Thursday, April 18. Tickets are now on sale at www.ptix.bm.

The fully interactive online guide featuring the entire BIFF line-up can be accessed at www. biff.bm/film-guide

Tickets for the opening, centrepiece and closing films are $25 and all other films are $15.

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