FREE COUNTRY OPENED FESTIVAL OF GERMAN FILMS IN ROME
On 26 June, Christian Alvart's thriller FREE COUNTRY opened the four-day Festival del Cinema Tedesco in the Italian capital as an open-air event. Felix Kramer, one of the main actors, travelled to Rome and spoke to the audience about the film before the sold-out screening began. The director Johannes Naber was also there as a guest and presented his film CURVEBALL, A TRUE STORY - UNFORTUNATELY to the audience. A detailed report about the festival will follow in the next Newsletter.
More information about the Festival of German Films in Rome can be found here.
KINO! FILM SALON LIVE FROM CANNES
The next meeting of the English-language online film club will be focusing on Maren Ade's film TONI ERDMANN – rather fitting given the location for the next event: the Festival de Cannes! TONI ERDMANN was shown in the renowned festival's official competition in 2016 and has been thrilling film fans and critics around the globe ever since. This time round, there'll be a surprise guest in attendance. If you want to know who it is, just register here for the next KINO! Film Salon:
RSVP: http://bit.ly/kinosalontoni
Date and time: Sunday, July 11, 2021 at 11am - 12pm PDT, 2pm - 3pm EDT, 8pm - 9pm CET.
Hosted by Sydney Levine
KINO! Film Salon is a production of Telescope Film, in association with the German Film Office.
GERMAN FILMS SUPPORTS LE BALLON ROUGE IN CANNES
The Marché du Film and Parenting at Film Festivals are offering a childcare service at the Le Ballon Rouge daycare centre from 7 to 14 July for film professionals attending the Festival de Cannes so that they can maintain a harmonious work-life balance. Market Badge holders will have priority access to this service, but visitors with press and festival accreditation are also eligible. The day care centre is available for children aged 6 months to 12 years from 10am to 6pm and for a maximum of 6 hours per child.
German Films is supporting the project financially. Please contact parentingatfilmfests@gmail.com if you have any questions or wish to register childcare on-site.
RUSSIAN-LANGUAGE PODCAST POCALIGARIM: EVERYTHING ABOUT FILM EDUCATION IN GERMANY
The first online live conversation between the founders of the Russian-language podcast POCALIGARIM and four former film students in Germany was held on 15 June, 2021.
How do you get to be a student at a German film school? What do you have to do to get your film shown at the film festival in Cannes? How are film projects funded? And how can you become the producer, for example, of Angela Schanelec's films? Listeners will get to learn all about this and much more during the online live conversation between the podcast hosts - Ksenia Reutova, Ira Posrednikova and Maria Buneva - and their invited guests.
The featured guests are Dmitry Mamuliya, Kiril Krasovski, Anastasia Gorokhova and Dmitry Vachedin.
Dmitry Mamuliya (film director, screenwriter, artistic director of the Moscow School of New Cinema) has taught at the DFFB.
Kirill Krasovski (producer of the films SELF-CRITICISM OF A BOURGEOIS DOG and BLOODSUCKERS by Julian Radlmaier) studied at the DFFB.
Anastasia Gorokhova (journalist and screenwriter) graduated as a screenwriter from the DFFB.
Dmitry Vachedin (writer, screenwriter, journalist) graduated as a screenwriter from the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF.
The recording of the conversation (in Russian) is available at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmMGCF_OPNY
FRITZI WINS IN PORTUGAL
The German animated film FRITZI – A REVOLUTIONARY TALE by Ralf Kukula and Matthias Bruhn won the Audience Award at the IndieJúnior Allianz children's and youth film festival in Oporto. The film is a detailed and lovingly animated story about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolution of 1989 seen from a child's perspective.
AWARD FOR GERMAN PRODUCTION AT SUNNY SIDE OF THE DOC
Isa Willinger's film NO MERCY - THE FEMALE GAZE, produced by Tondowski Films, won the East Doc Market Award at Sunny Side of the Doc 2021. The jury gave the director's creative and original approach to gender issues as the reason for its decision.
MAIN AWARD FOR AWARE IN SEDONA
Another German documentary was able to hold its own in the festival circuit: AWARE – GLIMPSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS by Frauke Sandig and Eric Black not only opened the ILLUMINATE Film Festival in Sedona (22 - 26 May, 2021), but also received the Feature Competition Jury Prize! The Umbrella Films production opens in cinemas in Germany on 2 September and is set to be released in the USA on 24 September. AWARE will also be screened at the following festivals: Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Millennium Docs Against Gravity, and the Five Lakes Film Festival.
