Editor

DER FILM - the festival of German-language films will be held in Prague for the first time from October 4 - 8. Prague's AERO and SVĚTOZOR program cinemas will be showing a total of 22 feature films and documentaries from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The festival is being organised by the Goethe Institut, the Austrian Culture Forum and the Swiss Embassy in Prague.

The festival will be opened with the most successful German film of this year, THE LIVES OF OTHERS (DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. The director and the main actor Ulrich Mühe will be in attendance. The story about a writer spied on by the Stasi received a number of film awards, including being named Best German Film of 2006. Other German feature films at the festival are UNVEILED (FREMDE HAUT, Angelina Maccarone), OFFBEAT (KAMMERFLIMMERN, Hendrik Hölzemann), WINTER JOURNEY (WINTERREISE, Hans Steinbichler), EDEN (Michael Hofmann), REQUIEM (Hans-Christian Schmid), TOUGH ENOUGH (KNALLHART, Detlef Buck) and PINGPONG (Matthias Luthardt).

Apart from the multi-award-winning "journey of sound" TOUCH THE SOUND by Thomas Riedelsheimer, the Prague event will also show the German documentaries LAST TO KNOW (JEDER SCHWEIGT VON ETWAS ANDEREM) by Marc Bauder and Doerte Franke, HEAVY METAL AUF DEM LANDE by Andreas Geiger, WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE (ZUR FALSCHEN ZEIT AM FALSCHEN ORT) by Tamara Milosevic, ON THE OUTSKIRTS (AM RAND DER STÄDTE) Aysun Bademsoy as well as INTO GREAT SILENCE (DIE GROSSE STILLE) by Philip Groening.

The festival is being staged with support from German Films, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, MFG Filmfoerderung Baden-Wuerttemberg, the Swiss Department for Foreign Affairs, the Austrian Culture Forum in Prague and the Austrian Film Commission.