by Thinus Ferreira
The 44th Durban International Film Festival (DIFF) is set to take place over 10 days at the University of KwaZulu-Natal from 20 July, with more than 3 000 films from 137 countries which entered this year's edition, for an online and in-person presentation.
The 44th Durban International Film Festival, the oldest film festival in South Africa that made its debut in 1979, will do a live-screening at the CineCentre in the Suncoast complex, with other venues which will be announced closer to the start of the festival.
The 44th Durban International Film Festival will make use of both online and in-person presentations for film lovers in South Africa.
Durban International Film Festival manager Andrea Voges - after working at the Joburg Film Festival, Red Sea International Film Festival, Realness Institute, Ucuru Media, National Arts Council of South Africa and the National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa (NFVF) as a project coordinator - has returned to the DIFF where she worked between 2010 and 2014.
The Durban International Film Festival says the 2023 programme "will showcase the works of filmmakers who place their imaginations, voices, creativity and lenses at the centre of creating films that inspire, confront, challenge and provoke audiences".
"The programming team will look out for innovative storytelling that will connect storytellers with audiences," says Andrea Voges.
The film shorts programming team comprises of the founder of Alfreda's Cinema, Melissa Lyde (US), curator, filmmaker and historian Greta Morton (Australia), filmmaker, visual artist, and film festival programmer Yanyu Dong (China) and the curator, cultural programmer and producer Mitchell Harper (South Africa).
The documentary programmers are film director and curator Ygor Gama (Argentina/Brazil), line producer and programme coordinator Egar Ntanyi (Nigeria) and film director, producer and director of photography Inadelso Cossa (Mozambique).
Writer and director Indranil Banerjee (India), curator, producer, director and broadcaster Andrea Cals (Brazil), festival programmer and distributor Safa Morad (Egypt) and film critic, programmer and journalist Tara Karajicoa (Serbia), will make up the programming team for the features category.
The 44th Durban International Film Festival from 20 to 30 July will be followed by the 11th kykNET Silwerskermfees Film Festival taking place in Camps Bay in Cape Town from 23 to 26 August.
