LONDON -- Pubcaster the BBC is launching a competition to choose the best foreign-language film released in the U.K. each year, to be held on its digital arts channel BBC4.
A jury from the film world will select the first winner in a new program, "BBC4 Film of the Year 2003," to be shown in January 2004.
"In the past 10 months BBC4 has shown that there's much more to cinema than Hollywood and proved that viewers have a real appetite for brilliant filmmaking, whatever its language and country of origin," said Roly Keating, Controller of BBC4. "Audiences have been flocking to cinemas to see films such as "Together," "Y tu mama tambien," and "City of God" and I'm delighted that the BBC4 Film of the Year will help to put films like these center-stage."
Since its launch in March, BBC4 has put international cinema at the heart of its schedules, with at least one new or classic foreign-lingo film shown in peaktime every week, over half of which have been TV premieres.
Films have ranged from Mohsen Makhmalbaf's award-winning "Kandahar" to "Luis Bunuel" and Salvador Dali's 1928 classic, "Un Chien Andalou."
Upcoming movies to receive their U.K. TV premiere in March include "Roberto Succo," based on the true story of an Italian psychopath who became France's public enemy number one; "The Devil's Backbone," Guillermo de Toro's supernatural thriller set in the final days of the Spanish Civil War; "The Fast Runner," a tragic love story set in the closely-knit Inuit community; "The Officer's Ward," the story of a young French lieutenant's recuperation from horrific injuries at the beginning of the World War I; and "Time of Favor," Joseph Cedar's thriller set in an Orthodox Jewish settlement on the West Bank.
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