The Oldenburg International Film Festival launched the first titles of its 32nd edition, highlighting a world premiere and debut slate with strong Irish screenings and recent highlights from the Cannes, Karlovy Vary, and Locarno Film Festivals.
Three new Irish productions anchor this year's program. Six-time Oscar nominee Jim Sheridan teams with David Merriman on Reenactment , which revisits the hotly contested case of Ian Bailey, long linked to the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. The film premiered at Tribeca and stars Vicky Krieps and John Connors.
Connors also stars in Loving, a feature film by director Kevin Treacy and cinematographer Jason Byrne. The drama, set in an unlikely romance set in a psychiatric hospital, will have its world debut in Oldenburg. Rounding out the Irish spotlight is Horseshoe by Edwin Mullane and Adam O'Keeffe, a family drama with supernatural elements that won Best Irish Film in Galway.
Highlights include Ondřej Protznik's Broken Voices , which debuted at Karlovy Vary; Vinent Grashaw's Be Still , which debuted at Locarno and features Lou Diamond Phillips; and The Girl in the Snow, Louise Hemon's debut, which screened at Cannes Critics' Week. The festival will also showcase Ben Leonberg's Good Boy , which debuted at SXSW.
World premieres include Alejandro Castro Arias' Harakiri, I Miss You, Guillaume Campanacci The Silent Sinner, Nancy Biniavaki's Mason, Cris Tapia Marchiori's Shooter , and Jérôme Vandewattyne's Belgian satire Summer Hit Machine .
Oldenburg also unveiled this year's festival trailer. Directed by Edgar Pêra ( Telegraph Letters Like This, Magnetic Roads ) and co-created with Festival director Torsten Neumann, it reimagines H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds with an alien invasion unleashed on the streets of northern Germany.
The short film will be released in theaters nationwide in Germany on August 21. You can watch it below.
