Honorary guest of the festival, Michael Nyman, will be awarded the Golden Duke Lifetime Achievement Award on July 10, 2015 at the OIFF opening ceremony. Michael Nyman will present, together with the Michael Nyman Band, his musical arrangement for the film “The Man with the Movie Camera” by Dziga Vertov at the Potemkin stairs for the traditional open-air screening.
Jim Sheridan, six-time Academy Award nominee and winner of numerous international awards, will personally present his retrospective, which includes a selection of his most prominent films:
- My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989) about the life of Christy Brown, the Irish writer and artist, born with cerebral palsy (two Academy Awards);
- In the Name of the Father (1993) that tells the story of Gerry Conlon, the Irishman wrongly convicted of an IRA bomb attack in the U.K. The film won an award at Berlinale in 1994 and got seven Oscar nominations;
- a semi-autobiographical film In America (2002), dedicated to Jim Sheridan's late brother Frankie;
- The Field (1990), a feature about the Irish famine.
OIFF 2015 Gala Premieres Program
The lineup of out-of-competition program, Gala Premieres, includes the Academy Award winning drama Birdman by Alejandro González Iñárrituu. The story of an aging movie star (Michael Keaton) was nominated for in 9 Oscars and subsequently won 4 awards, including The Academy Award for Best Picture. The program will also include a fresh interpretation of Nabokov's story by Marielle Heller - The Diary of a Teenage Girl, which won the Grand Prix of the Generation 14 plus International Jury at the Berlinale 2015; and Palme d'Or nominee, Nanni Moretti's family drama Mia Madre, with a famous Italian actress Margherita Buy in the leading role.
The 6th Odessa International Film Festival will be held on July 10-18, 2015.