Radmila Djurica

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One of the guests of festival and the jurist of Europe Out Of Europe is  an American film critic and journalist Deborah Young and recently from 2007 the Artistic Director of the Taormina Film Festival, one of the oldest and most prestigious Italian film festivals.  Deborah has been working on other Mediterranean festivals by now, including Pula in a period old Yugoslavia and has been more than 20 years an official film critics for Variety and today she is the lead critic of European film in the Hollywood Reporter. By now, Deborah has been member of many juries on many festivals and today she lives in Rome  as an advisor on the series The New Italian Film in the USA, the Netherlands and Russia, as the co- editor of the magazine The Cineaste in New York. It is not hard to guess that making a choice rules by the highest standards, of course by taking into account the Berlin laureate as well. But it is also really important to present small film industries and their quality films to all major festivals in the world, in order to gain more publicity internationally. According to Deborah, film festival is the place for promoting films and culture to a big wide world. It is also very important for younger to see these films, smaller cinematography and of course, to promote art as well.

Deborah Young also commented on the crises in Italian film today, because Italian government is seriously reducing the budget for art and culture. The situation that is similar everywhere in the world.  "In times of recession, it seems that culture is affected the first by cuts and the politicians see it as an opportunity to reduce the costs. I am deeply convinced that this is wrong, since culture mobilizes people for changes, inspires them and makes them look forward. It is also a huge industry employing a large number of people," commented Deborah.

Eventually we asked Deborah what does she thinks of FEST 2011, “We, the members of the jury, have seen all the films. I believe that the programming is a very interesting one, since it is very diverse. These are very good films and I want once again to commend the choice. Not all the films are on the same level quality wise, since they include the winner of the Berlin festival, the film “Honey”.