The International Programme of the 56th Pula Film Festival shall present 16 films, selected from the most prestigious world film festivals and from submissions made by producers. The films shall be screened at Kastel and in the Valli Cinema as part of Europolis-Meridians section and in the Arena as part of the PoPular Programme. The programme is mostly composed of genre films (crime films, comedies, melodramas...) and special emphasis this year is on French cinema.
The fifth edition of the Europolis-Meridians Programme opens on July 11th at Kastel with Eden is West (Eden à l'Ouest), a drama that closed this year’s Berlin Film Festival, directed by Greek-French veteran filmmaker Costa Gavras, centred around adventures of a young illegal immigrant in the European Union. French director Claude Chabrol, last year’s Pula laureate, shall be presented with the crime film Bellamy, the filmmaker’s first collaboration with Gerard Depardieu playing the part of the famous Parisian inspector Bellamy who takes up a mysterious murder case while on summer holidays. 
There is also the new film by famous French director Catherine Breillat – Bluebeard (La Barbe bleue), an unconventional costume drama centred on a girl who finally manages to deal with a cruel wife-murderer, whereas Julie Delpy directs and stars in The Countess, the biography of the vicious Erzebeth Bathory who maintained her youthful appearances by sacrificing young virgins. William Hurt and Daniel Brühl co-star alongside Delpy in the film. 
Last year’s Berlin Film Festival brings us Philippe Claudel’s film I Loved You So Long (Ily a longtemps que je t'aime), that won the Cesar Award for Best First Film and BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Film in the meantime, while Kristin Scott Thomas won the European Film Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe nomination for her role of a woman trying to fit in the family and the society after serving a 15 year prison sentence.
From the Sundance Film Festival comes Veit Helmer’s German allegorical comedy Absurdistan in which women refuse to have sex with their husbands until they get water again in their isolated village, as well as the praised crime thriller Transsiberian by American director Brad Anderson, a film about murder, chase and deception on a train ride from Moscow to China, starring Ben Kingsley, Woody Harrelson and others.
The last Venice Film Festival brings four films to Pula. The romantic drama The Burning Plain by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Arriaga (famed screenwriter of Love’s a Bitch, 21 Grams and Babel), starring Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, tells four stories about love affairs, sins from the past and family breakdowns.
Japan cinema is represented with Takeshi Kitano’s drama Achilles and the Tortoise (Akiresu to kame), a film about childhood, growing up and getting old of a painter who is persistent in trying to find his artistic path and be accepted. Vinko Möderndorfer’s crime thriller Landscape no. 2 (Pokrajina št. 2) centres around the secret of a commander of mass post-war killings revealed in a robbery by accident.
The last year's Cannes Film Festival brings us two films: the romantic drama Two Lovers by James Gray (Little Odessa, The Yards, We Own the Night) centred around a young man torn between a good friend his parents want to marry him to and a good-looking neighbour, in which, together with Gwyneth Paltrow, appears Joaquin Phoenix in his last role before starting his music career, and Sergei Dvortsevoy’s German-Kazakh drama Tulpan about a young man who is looking for a bride in the middle of a steppe after leaving naval service. The film won the Prix Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, the Special Prize for Best Director in Cottbus, best prizes in Tokyo, Zurich and Montreal and the best film award in East of the West section at Karlovy Vary.
The Karlovy Vary Film Festival brings us the winner of the best director award, the Russian drama Captive (Plennyy) by Aleksei Uchitel, centred around two Russian soldiers who use a young Chechen prisoner to break their way to freedom. The film won the best film award even at the most prestigious festival of East European film – the Cottbus Festival. This festival also brings us the French crime film The Killer (Le tueur) by Cedric Anger about a relationship between a professional killer and his victim, starring Gregoire Colin (Olivier, Olivier, Before the Rain, The Dreamlife of Angels, Horse Thieves).
From Great Britain comes Julian Jarrold’s drama Brideshead Revisited, based on Evelyn Waugh's famous novel about a young man whose life is changed when he meets with an aristocratic catholic family in pre-war England. From the Rome Film Festival comes the love drama A French Gigolo (Cliente) by French filmmaker Josiana Balasko (daughter of Croatian emigrant Ivan Blašković), a film about a married young man with a regular job leading a double life providing sexual services to rich ladies in his free time.
Eight films from Europolis-Meridians section of the International Programme will be premiered at Kastel from July 11th to 17th and then rescreened in the main programme at the Valli Cinema from 16.00 hours, while other seven films will be premiered from 18.00 hours. Five films from the PoPular Programme will be premiered in the Arena and all the films will have their Croatian premieres in Pula.
The International Programme of the 56th Pula Film Festival shall start with the warm-up programme of the 5th edition of the Europolis-Meridians Competition Programme at Kaštel that shall run from Saturday 11 July to Friday 17 July 2009, starting at 21.30. 
Zlatko Vidackovic