Two time Golden Phoenix winner Luc Dardenne, who “opened” the seminars of the 49^th Thessaloniki Film Festival, said that his movies are not political, because he and his brother Jean-Pierre are not interested in the ideology but in the “personal path of a person and how he deals with moral dilemmas.” Luc Dardenne speaks about his past when together with his brother they worked as second assistants to Armand Gatti, for whom he speaks as his spiritual father. Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne start filming documentaries, in which they film people who talk about their lives in the industrial suburbs of the city.

“Jean-Paul Sartre said that in a capitalist society everyone is divided even from a town plan point of view. The people we met then were jailed in their hard everyday life. When we filmed them, we brought them closer to each other.” Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne were winners of the Golden Alexander award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. The ceremony continued with their short films “Darkness” and “Lorna’s Silence,” for which the Dardenne brothers won best screenplay in this year’s Kan Film Festival.

But the applause this time was taken by the eccentric young woman Diablo Cody. The young American – screenwriter, who won Oscar for an original screenplay for her film “Juno,” attracts the attention and does not remain unseen both in her professional and personal life. When 24, she receives very good critiques for her autobiography as a dancer in a night club, and her internet blog Pussy Ranch Blog is one of the most daring ones.

In her seminar during the Thessaloniki Festival, Diablo Cody gave out a handbook for young screenwriters’ survival on their way from blog-space to the Oscars. As a jury member she said, “I prefer to judge than to be judged. It gives me pleasure.” Also she said that her next film will be the thriller “Jennifer’s Body,” which will come to the big screen during spring of 2009.

This year’s President of the jury will be the Canadian writer of “The English Patient” Michael Ondaatje, who said: “we the critics are not a closed off caste but people from different fields, this is what makes the committee more democratic.” When it comes to the way they judge, he notes: “we judge by what we like but we also let our experience and reason to guide us.” We will judge the films also for the audience, said the young Belgian Emile Dequenne giving the argument that “we will have to see the films from the viewer’s eyes in order to be fair.”