08/11/2011

Kicking off today, from November 8-13, the Braunschweig International Film Festival is celebrating its 25th edition. The Lower Saxony event, launched in 1987 as a civic movement for cinema opposed to commercial productions, will present, "3,441 films later", 160 films to more than 25,000 viewers. The two focal points around which it was founded, that is European cinema (with an emphasis on neighbouring France) and the link between cinema and music, nevertheless remain "the two pillars on which the festival plans to develop over the next 25 years", said its director, Volker Kufahl.

The festival will open this evening with a screening of Nanni Moretti’s latest film, We Have a Pope [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nanni Moretti
film profile]. It is among the 15 titles in the international programme, along with The Giants [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
interview: Bouli Lanners
film profile], The Kid With a Bike [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
film profile], King of Devil's Island [+see also:
trailer
film profile], The Last Circus [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Álex de la Iglesia
film profile] and The Mill and the Cross [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
interview: Lech Majewski
film profile]).

The audience will then get the chance to discover the ten debut and second European films vying for the Heinrich Award, which is worth €10,000 and goes to the audience’s favourite. The ten titles in competition are: Delphine and Muriel Coulin’s startling French film 17 Girls [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; John McIlduff’s caustic Northern Irish road movie Behold the Lamb; Tuyet Le’s British hospital thriller Patient 17; Urszula Antoniak’s Dutch film Code Blue [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; German director David Wnendt’s Combat Girls; Mikaël Buch’s Parisian comedy about Jewish and homosexual stereotypes, Let My People Go!; Polish helmer Leszek Dawid’s My Name is Ki [+see also:
trailer
interview: Leszek Dawid
film profile]; Árni Ólafur Ásgeirsson’s Icelandic tale set on the high seas, Undercurrent; What’s A Bear For? [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Spain’s Tom Fernández; and Marian Crisan’s French/Hungarian/Romanian co-production Morgen [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

The winner of the festival’s other main prize, the Europa European Actors Award, has already been decided. After Bruno Ganz, Stellan Skarsgård, Hanna Schygulla and John Hurt, French actress Isabelle Huppert will receive this trophy (created in 2007) on November 13. Braunschweig has dedicated a special programme to the actress, with nine of her films including Eva Ionesco’s recent title My Little Princess [+see also:
trailer
interview: Anamaria Vartolomei
film profile].

Besides the Leo, which will reward a short film with great musical value, the festival will see the presentation of the KINEMA Prize by a young Franco-German jury. The vast line-up also includes a German section and a Norman section, the night-time event "A Wall is a Screen", musical events of all kinds, seminars and in particular a discussion about the role of festivals in the future of cinema.

(Translated from French)