LUKOIL SRBIJA – GENERAL SPONSOR OF THE 45th FEST
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
At noon on January 30, the first press conference on the occasion of the upcoming 45th FEST, to take place from February 24 until March 05, 2017, was held in the Ceremonial Hall of the Belgrade City Assembly.
According to Ivona Jevtić, the Municipal Secretary for Culture and the President of the 45th FEST’S Board, 95 films will be premiered at this year’s festival. As she said, this year the Secretariat for Culture of the City of Belgrade set aside an additional five million dinars for the biggest Belgrade film festival, and she stressed that additional aid was also expected from the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia. Ivona Jevtić also drew attention that for the second year in a row, the general sponsor of FEST is the company LUKOIL SRBIJA, on which occasion the press was addressed by Ivan Brajović, Deputy Director of Delivery and Logistics at LUKOIL SRBIJA, who said what a great pleasure it was to be part of such a significant event which has during its existence brought together many generations and which sets Belgrade apart from the other cities in the region.
The Art Director of FEST, Jugoslav Pantelić, said that FEST is an event which takes Belgrade a step closer to the rest of the world and that the program includes many attractive films, among which are those nominated for the Academy Awards, as well as classics that must not be forgotten. The main competition will feature 15 films who will compete for the main prize, the Belgrade Victor, which carries a monetary prize of EUR 10,000. The Belgrade victor for an outstanding contribution to the film art will go to Ljubiša Samardžić and the Belgrade victor for current creative work will go to Carlos Saura. Jugoslav Pantelić announced that the festival will be opened by the famous Italian actress Monica Bellucci and that on this occasion there will be a viewing of Emir Kusturica’s film "The Milky Road", at Sava Center. There will be seven films in the national program competing for a prize sponsored by the Film Center of Serbia. Mladen Đorđević, a selector of the program, noted that the focus of this year's program will be directed at erasing the line between documentary and feature films.
Nataša Ilić, the Director of CEBEF, addressed the journalists at the end informing them that the preparations for the FEST were well under way and thanked the selectors for the diverse program, the Festival's sponsor LUKOIL on the great help and wished everyone a successful and exciting festival.
