This year we did not call them “special”, even if they are, because every festival event is special to us! They are “Off Section” or not easy to immediately categorise in the various festival strands, despite being crucial events of our programme. Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Paul Haggis will present Million Dollar Baby (2005) by Clint Eastwood, the moral drama scripted by Haggis that brought him to the forefront of Hollywood. Another special guest this year is the writer and film buff Jonathan Coe, who will be presented at LunettArena to introduce Billy Wilder’s later masterpiece Fedora (1978), which inspired Coe’s most recent novel, Mr Wilder & Me. At the MAST Foundation, the documentary Lumumba, la mort du prophète will be presented, the first of two films by Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck about Patrice Lumumba, a central figure in the political history of Congo and all of Africa.