Front Runners

If you want to know where the art of film is heading right now, then take a closer look at the directors and the films, which we have brought together in the series, 'Front Runners'. They will be setting the artistic agenda in the coming years.

Several of this year's films radically challenge our position as spectators. Valerie Massadian's prize-winning film 'Nana', puts us in a 4-year-old girl's shoes, when she one day finds herself alone in the world. Maja Milos' extremely challenging teenage drama, 'Clip' is, by contrast, a tough and in-your-face generational study, with a distant cousin in the French squatter-drama, 'Low Life'. Both are young films with raw nerve and a restless energy.

From the well-established end of the film spectrum, Andrea Arnold ('Fish Tank') is back with her Bronté adaptation of 'Wuthering Heights'. Portuguese Teresa Villaverde has likewise created a fascinating portrait of a female artist in crisis with 'Swan'. And Miguel Gomes, also from Portugal, turns his scrutiny towards film's own history in the Berlin Film Festival sensation, 'Tabu', named after the Murnau and Flaherty masterpiece.

The French strangeling, Bertrand Bonello, has created his maturest film to date with the fin-de-siècle drama, 'House of Tolerance', which takes place in a Parisian brothel, and was a candidate for the Palme d'or in Cannes.

Cult-icon an infant terrible, Vincent Gallo, rounds off the series with a quirky double role as pusher and Sheriff/DJ in the Italian, Davide Manuli's modern re-dress of the Kasper Hauser myth, now complete with flying saucers and hard techno. This year, and quite atypically for this series, 'Front Runners' also presents the opportunity to experience 3D technique, which has been applied with strong artistic deliberation, in the South Korean 'A Fish'.