source :http://www.newsbeast.gr

From today until 13 November, when the Festival ends, they will be shown as a whole 151 movies from 53 Countries. Alexander Payne's new film “The Descendants / The Descendants" starring George Clooney, in the context of the 52nd Thessaloniki Festival which starts tonight. "The festival will continue even with 1/5 of the budget that my predecessors had, and it will be even better, even more interesting, even more cinematic" said artistic director Dimitris Epidis while presenting the festival program. The budget of this year's event is just two million euros – amount secured by NSRF, the Ministry of Culture, and sponsorships. They participate in the official Competition program 15 first or second fiction films by directors from around the world, which will claim the Gold, the Silver and the Bronze Alexander (correspond to a cash prize 20.000, 10.000 and 5.000 euro . This year's event also pays tribute to the work of filmmaker Konstantinos Giannaris, to the Turkish director Erden Kiral, to American Sarah Driver (partner and partner of Jim Jarmusch), the Danish Ole Christian Madsen, Austrian documentarian Urlich Seidl and Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino (in Thessaloniki will be the premiere of the recent - and first English-language- his film "This must be the place" starring Sean Penn as a former rock star. – The premiere will be given next Friday night 11 November on 11 pm at the "Olympion" cinema). The parallel organization of "Open Horizons" is also awaited with interest (with films from the independent film scene) with screenings of films such as that of the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne "The Kid on the Bicycle" but also the Golden Lion-winning film at the recent Venice Film Festival by the multi-awarded Russian director Alexander Sokurov "Faust". They are included in the Special Screenings, the new films by Mathieu Kasowitz "Order and Morality" and Andrey Zviadzhinchev "Elena" as well as the prize winner at the last Cannes Film Festival, film "Goodbye" by Iranian Mohammad Rasulov, who has been sentenced by the Iranian regime to 5 years in prison and a 20-year ban on making new films.