Culture, / By STA

The Commission for the Prevention of Corruption is organising the second anti-corruption film festival. Film Against Corruption will be held in Ljubljana at the end of September, showcasing seven films as part of the watchdog's awareness-raising campaign.



Organisers expect that Citizenfour (2014), the documentary on whistleblower Edward Snowden, will attract the most visitors (Photo: wikipedia)

The films will be covering a variety of corruption-related issues, such as whistleblowing and lobbying. Commission vice president Alma Sedlar says that informing the public about these topics is one of the strongest weapons in the fight against corruptive behaviour.

Organisers expect that Citizenfour (2014), the documentary on whistleblower Edward Snowden, will attract the most visitors, along with Andrej Zakonjšek's To The Top And Back (2015), the story of Bine Kordež, a former CEO of Slovenian hardware retailer Merkur who is facing a retrial for business fraud. Both films will be followed by debates.

The festival will take place in the Slovenska Kinoteka cinematheque, the Commission's main partner for the event, between 29 September and 4 October, coinciding with the commission's 11th anniversary and Slovenia's annual Anti Corruption Week.

This is the second year the festival is taking place. Last year's event garnered significant attention from local and foreign media, as it was, to Sedlar's knowledge, the first of its kind on the global scale.

Sedlar says that every country should find its own creative way of raising awareness on this subject. She believes that film is the most direct type of artistic medium, as it addresses the broadest public and presents topics which cover important aspects of human lives.

The festival will open with Josef von Sternberg's silent film Underworld (1927) with live background music by prominent Slovenian pianist Andrej Goričar.

It will also screen Martin Scorsese's award-winning Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Mike Nichols's Silkwood (1983), and Tony Scott's The Last Boy Scout (1991). Organisers say they also wish to attract youths to the festival by holding a debate for secondary school students after George Clooney's The Ides of March (2011).