From the 18th till 25th January, Trieste Film Festival 2019 will celebrate a double anniversary: the 30th edition of an event that has always been the meeting point for diverse “longitudes” of European cinema, and thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The artwork for the poster was chosen to communicate both these celebrations: a photograph taken by the great Dominique Issermann on the set of Possession, shot in Berlin in the summer of 1980 by director Andrzej Żuławski, an old friend of the festival. The photograph shows the protagonist Isabelle Adjani – who won the Palme D’Or for Best Actress at Cannes the following year – as she skips beside the wall. Max Mestroni from the creative agency Claimax adapted the image under close supervision of the artist to create a poster that embodied this spirit. He explains: “Issermann’s photograph immediately fascinated us: despite the severity of the black and white, the photograph is far from celebratory symbolism and restores ingenuity and lightness.”

Alongside the official poster, a concise and eccentric retrospective will focus on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The festival’s artistic directors Fabrizio Grosoli and Nicoletta Romeo explain: “The retrospective will provide an alternative, ironic take on the historical moment from which our event arises. A touch of Jewish humour, that ‘jüdischer Witz’, distinct to the culture of Mitteleuropa, combining high and low, comedy and drama. 4 titles in the programme are: “One, Two, Three!” by Billy Wilder (1961), filmed in Berlin the summer the Wall was constructed; “Toto and Peppino Divided in Berlin” by Giorgio Bianchi (1962), an “instant comedy” written by Age and Scarpelli, with scenes of the Wall reconstructed at the Hippodrome of Tor di Valle in Rome; and the Oscar nominated documentary “Rabbit à la Berlin” by Bartosz Konopka (2009), that portrays everyday life in divided Berlin from the perspective of the wild rabbits inhabiting the zone between the two walls; and of course “Possession” by Andrzej Żuławski (1981), a powerful and horrifying metaphor for the evil in man and contemporary society.”[:]