The eighth Cinedays European Film Festival is opening on 20th November (thru 26th November) with the Cannes winner “Das Weisse Band” (The White Ribbon) by Michael Haneke. The opening film is an extraordinary achievement, both provocative and disturbing, which the author sets in north Germany before the World War I. The main programme of the festival includes 12 films selected by director Vladimir Blazevski. A novelty, music documentary film programme including concerts, has been introduced in this festival edition. The venue is the Youth Cultural Centre including the Frosina Cinema within the centre. Besides Haneke’s film, the official selection will see a few more grand authors’ festival award winning achievements. Blazevski says the selection of films by directors such as Belochio, Almodovar, Daldry, Ozon and other is not accidental. “My case for such a ‘brave’ casting,“ Blazevski says, “lies in the fact that the Macedonian and Skopje cinema activity is waning. This is not about a crisis but a collapse. There is no cinema network and even worse, the habit for going to the cinema has almost become extinct. In such a moment, it seemed to me natural to give my selection such dimensions even at the price of making it foreseeable or conformist. I think this could be a small step toward bringing back film loving and intellectually inquisitive audiences to the cinema.” Beside the “White Ribbon,” Cinedays audiences will see two unusual love films by French directors, veteran Alain-René’s “Les Herbes Folles” and his younger colleague Francois Ozon’s “Ricky.” Marco Belochio with ”Vincere,” a story about Mussolini’s secret son; Hans-Christian Smitd’s “Sturm” about a Hague trial; and Steven Daldry’s “The Reader” with Kate Winslet as concentration camp guard follow.  From the region, we will see Serbian “St George Shoots the Dragon,” two Romanian films: “Police, Adjective” by Corneliu Porumboiu and omnibus “Tales from the Golden Age”; Czech “Country Teacher” by Bohdan Slama; and Norwaigian Max Manus by Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg. Almodovar’s latest “Los Abrazos Lotos” will close the festival on 26th November. A three-member jury headed by Ilindenka Petrusevska and including Dzevdet Tuzlic (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Orhan Tair (Bulgaria) will decide on the award.