PACIFIC CINÉMATHÈQUE IS VERY pleased to be partnering again with the Vancouver Consulates and Ottawa Embassies of the European Union’s member states to present this exciting event. Vancouver audiences have an enormous appreciation and appetite for European filmmaking — for the continent’s great national cinemas and great film artists. Their enthusiastic support has turned the EUFF, an annual celebration of the richness and diversity of contemporary European filmmaking, into a great popular success – a must-see event for local film lovers.

The European Union has been much in the news these past months; there’s no doubt that 2011 has been one of the most challenging years in the EU’s history. On screen, however, Europe’s filmmaking nations continue to be standard-bearers for high artistic achievement and dynamic cultural expression, as the fine selection of movies in this year’s EUFF attests. You’ll find international festival and critical favourites; national award winners and Oscar submissions; new films from young and emerging directors; and films that that have been major box-office hits at home but haven’t been widely seen abroad. There are contemporary dramas, edgy comedies, literary adaptations, historical pieces, coming-of-age tales, and much more. Many of these films engage, in ways that are entertaining, illuminating, thought-provoking, surprising, and inspiring, the economic, political, generational, and cross-cultural challenges facing Europe and the wider world today.

I hope you will enjoy this year’s festival.

Jim Sinclair
Executive + Artistic Director
Pacific Cinémathèque