Day 2 of the Festival kicked off the first full day of screenings, beginning with the French family drama Restless (L’Insurgée) at the Regal Cinemas South Beach, and visits from a slate of new and renowned international directors who descended upon Miami to promote the beginning of the many World and U.S. Premieres scheduled during the Festival.

Oscar-winning documentary director Brigitte Berman selected Miami to host the U.S. Premiere of her latest, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, proving that the humanitarian side of the Hefinator stretches far beyond his Bunny conservation efforts. Mr. Hefner, unfortunately, could not attend the sold-out screening at Regal Cinemas, but he does have his sights set on an Art Deco beauty where he plans to open his next Playboy Club (the original is in Las Vegas). Will it be the Sagamore? The Fontainebleu? Stay tuned for an announcement during the festival.

In a last-minute surprise, acclaimed director Alan Tomlinson abandoned his business trip in Mexico and returned home to Miami and Miami Dade College’s Tower Theater in Little Havana for the film festival circuit World Premiere of Smithsonian Networks’ The Accordion Kings, featuring Grammy Award-winning Colombian singer and actor Carlos Vives. The documentary film is a celebration of Colombia’s vallenato music scene and the first celluloid account of the world-famous music festival held in the town of Valledupar in Northern Colombia’s Magdalena Valley that crowns the King of Accordion Players. Producer Charles Poe and Pilar O’Leary, former director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Latino Center, also attended. The film is scheduled to air later this year on The Smithsonian Channel.

FIPRESCI Prize-winning Swedish director Jesper Ganslandt visited Regal Cinemas along with festival Artistic Director Tiziana Finzi and introduced his second film, The Ape (Apan), a feature in the festival’s World Competition about a disoriented man who suffers a psychotic break and struggles to regain his hold on reality. It is a film that which exemplifies an exciting new style of filmmaking to emerge from the Baltics, which Finzi calls “Swedish New Cinema.”  

Calin Peter Netzer introduced his third feature, Medal of Honor (Medalia de Onoare)—a selection in the World Competition—a further examination of Romania’s continued woes in the aftermath of dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu’s longtime rule, which finds a WWII veteran named Ion battling a government bureaucracy to discover why it issued him a much-belated service medal for an act of heroism he can’t recollect.  

Serbian director Vladimir Perisic and Chilean director Cristián Jiménez both brought their feature film debuts to Miami: Perisic’s Ordinary People, a selection in the World Competition and winner of several awards at the 2009 Sarajevo Film Festival, including Best Film, depicts a disturbing day in the life of a young soldier as he undergoes an initiation into the cruel ritual of military killings. On a lighter note, Jiménez’s charmingly quirky narrative Optical Illusions (Ilusiones ópticas), a selection in the Ibero-American Competition, explores society’s neuroses and obsessions with appearances.  

The festival’s first standing-room-only Gusman Gala, for the Swedish murder investigation thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor), began with an invitation-only, pre-reception soiree at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts hosted by the Café at Books & Books, Stella Artois and Barefoot Wine & Bubbly for filmmakers, jury members, industry executives and Miami Film Society members. Acclaimed director Niels Arden Oplev regaled the audience with tales from the making of the international phenomenon, based on the novel, Men Who Hate Women, the first in the best-selling trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson. Can you believe this unrelenting adrenaline rush started out as made-for-TV fodder broadcast on Sweden’s small screen?

He especially reveled in discussing break-out lead actress Noomi Rapace:  after auditioning a slew of talent, known and unknown, Rapace showed up wearing heavy make-up, her boyfriend’s grungy street clothes and told him she hadn’t showered for four days—and nailed the part of rebel computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. The in-demand actress also planned to attend MIFF, but filming on her latest project, the directorial feature debut from veteran Swedish actress Pernilla August (best known to U.S. audiences as Shmi Skywalker, mother of the young Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace and Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of the Clones) still hasn’t wrapped principal photography.

Many in the sold-out crowd were glad to experience Tattoo before the (gasp!) already-in-pre-production Hollywood remake (due in 2012) starts filming (with possible Oscar winner and British break-out starlet Carey Mulligan of An Education fame—watch  tomorrow night’s Academy Awards ceremony!—rumored to star). Look for Rapace next in the final two installments: The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest—which are making their way now through European theaters and beginning their run on the international film festival circuit. Can you say MIFF 2011 double feature?

That’s a wrap!

by Dana Ballestero, Daily Wrap Editor

VIEW DAILY WRAP DAY 3: Sunday, March 7, 2010