Editor

The 33rd FilmFestival Cottbus will once again attract national and international guests to the Lausitz metropolis from 7 to 12 November, when it will shine in its festival colour of blue.
 
In the feature film competition, twelve films from 19 (co-)production countries will compete for the main prize of 25,000 euros, donated by the Gesellschaft zur Wahrnehmung von Film- und Fernsehrechten (GWFF), the special prize for the best director (7,500 euros, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg) and the prize for an outstanding individual performance (5,000 euros, Sparkasse Spree-Neiße), including the coveted prize sculpture LUBINA (Sorbian: the lovely one). Eleven of these films celebrate their German premiere at the FFC.
 
These prizes are awarded by the International Festival Jury, which this year consists of Nana Janelidze, director and screenwriter from Georgia, Avelina Prat, Spanish writer and director, acting star Rauand Taleb and Gregorz Stępniak, artistic director of the Polish Mastercard OFF CAMERA International Festival of Independent Cinema.
 
"The competition this year is more diverse than ever," says programme director Bernd Buder, adding: "We are showing films ranging from the political thriller LIBERTATE (Tudor Giurgiu, RO/HU 2023), which is based on true events and traces the events during the fall of Ceauşescu's regime in Timișoara- to the Kung Fu comedy THE INVISIBLE FIGHT (Rainer Sarnet EE/GR/LV/FI 2023), in which flying monks make quite a mess of the life of a heavy metal - fan. "
 
In PATIENT #1, director Rezo Gigineishvili uses the example of a sick Soviet political functionary to reflect on a political system that has to keep its symbolic figures alive artificially in order to survive itself. A film that certainly allows parallels to be drawn with the current world situation.

Several competition entries interpret, show and understand the theme of love in different ways, coupled with social criticism: BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD BLACKBERRY (Elene Naveriani, GE/CH 2023 tells the story of a woman in her late 40s who is caught between the magic of a romantic encounter and the unconditional will for independence. COLD AS MARBLE (Asif Rustamov, AZ/FR 2022) is a somewhat different love triangle about an artist in disguise, a sarcastic film about a society that only appreciates success and power. The subject of supposed love is also at stake in FOREVER-FOREVER (Anna Buryachkova, UA/NL 2023), a captivating homage to the generation of post-Soviet "90s kids" and a film about growing up in a Ukraine so different from today's. LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT (Inari Niemi, FI 2023) touchingly tells the love story of teenage girls Mariia and Mimi, which is doomed to fail due to the lovers' origins from different social classes.
 
In WHERE THE ROAD LEADS (Nina Ognjanović, RS 2022), confusion enters the regular life of a small village with the appearance of a stranger - the inhabitants eye every sign of otherness suspiciously.
 
IMAGO (Olga Chajdas, PL/NL/CZ 2023), is based on the true story of Ela Góra, a star of the punk underground stages in late 1980s Poland: apolitical protest in turbulent times, told from a feminist perspective.

THREE THOUSAND NUMBERED PIECES (Ádám Császi, HU 2022) reflects on the different layers of systemic racism and antiziganism - between crude prejudice and supposedly enlightened culture. A cry of rage based on the play "Gypsy Hungarian", written by the members of a Rom*nja theatre group fighting against discrimination and stigmatisation of their people.

Pandemic situations come to the screen in two competition films: APOKAWIXA (Xawery Żuławski, PL 2022) is an ecstatic mix of zombie film and eco-thriller: a nouveau riche son celebrates a wild post-Corona party where all the bathing partygoers become zombies, because Dad makes his millions dumping toxins in the sea. In the northern Macedonian fantasy film M (Vardan Tozija, NMK/HR/XK/FR/LU 2023), people have become zombies after a pandemic, and eight-year-old Marko, together with his best friend who suffers from Down's syndrome, must find his way in a world that has become a lost place.
 
In the Short Film Competition, twelve films are competing this year for the Main Prize, endowed with 2,500 euros by Druckzone, and the Special Prize for Best Director, which is awarded in the amount of 1,500 euros by Tiede+.
 
Included is AS IT WAS, a film by Anastasia Solonevych (PL/UA 2022) and Damian Kocur, who won the Special Prize for Best Director at FFC 2022 for BREAD AND SALT. AS IT WAS shows an attempt at everyday life in the midst of war in Kyiv. PRISHTINA (Trendeline Halili, XK 2022) and THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT THE FIGHT (Andrea Slaviček, HR/ES 2023) tell of the challenges of puberty, NIGHT STOP (Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, FI 2022) relocates twin-peaks horror to the Finnish provinces and CHILD'S PLAY (Silver Õunz, EE 2023) shows how a weekend in the countryside gets out of hand with a good dose of black humour.
 
The jury of the Competition Short Film consists of the Kazakh producer Yuliya Kim, the development producer Franziska Gärtner from Berlin and the Potsdam actor Thomas Drechsel, known from the TV series "Gute Zeiten Schlechte Zeiten".
 
Nine films are represented in this year's U18 Youth Film Competition, all of which have hopes of winning the prize for the best youth film, endowed with 5,000 euros - by the city of Cottbus. The films show the rebellion and melancholy of young savages who pose their questions to their parents' generation with vigour and toughness: sensitive outsiders and hard-boiled drop-outs between end-time echoes and war traumas, real love and the search for it.

WUT AUF KUBA (Naira Kavero Orihuel, DE 2022) was shot in Cottbus and is an unconventional road movie about a very young single mother in search of adventure and the great freedom. BROYS (Marcin Filipowicz, PL 2022) shows the skateboarding brothers' search for meaning in a stylish black-and-white hipster look. In BRUTAL HEAT (Albert Hospodářský, CZ/SK 2023) a piece of the sun races towards the earth. It is unclear if and when it will hit the planet, but the heat can already be felt and people start to interact very strangely with each other.

Sensitively staged coming-of-age films are EXCURSION (Una Gunjak, BA/HR/RS/FR/NO 2023), SUMMER ENDS SOON (Yana Skopina, KZ/RU 2022) and SWEET SORROW (Kosta Đorđević, RS 2022).

DYAD (Yana Titova, BG 2023) is an unsparing schoolyard shocker from Bulgaria in which a young girl resorts to crass means to get one thing: her mother's love.

In ROLE MODEL (Nejc Gazvoda, SI/CZ/IT/RS 2023) the pandemic is one theme and bullying another, both together culminating in a dysfunctional mother-son relationship. THE DREAM IS GONE (Maria Batova, RU 2021), on the other hand, is about a father-daughter relationship. Alyona wants to get to know her father and meets a man who is a severely traumatised war veteran.



Film lists and further information on the individual sections are available on request. In the press section of our website you will also find film stills and other visual material. Accreditation for the festival week is possible online and free of charge for the reporting press. The complete programme is also now available on the website as well as the festival magazine with more detailed information on each individual film and all festival sections. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.


The FilmFestival Cottbus is largely supported by the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the City of Cottbus as well as the Media Programme of the European Union.