goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is set to celebrate its 19th edition this year from 10 to 16 April in Wiesbaden, Germany. The full programme for the festival, hosted by DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, is now available online at: www.filmfestival-goeast.de/en/program
The centrepiece of goEast is its Competition section, in which 16 works – ten fiction features and six documentary films – vie for honours. “In addition to works tackling current political topics, there are a notable number of films in 2019 that deal with generational conflicts,” revealed festival director Heleen Gerritsen. “30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people expect different things out of life depending on which system they grew up in. This generational conflict is also evident in Teona Mitevska’s opening film GOD EXISTS, HER NAME IS PETRUNYA.”
Juries & Awards Among the 16 entries to the Competition, ten films will be celebrating their German premieres at goEast, while the section also features two international and one world premiere. An international jury will determine the winners of multiple awards: the Golden Lilly for Best Film (featuring prize money of 10,000 euros), the Award of the City of Wiesbaden for Best Director (7,500 euros) and the Award of the Federal Foreign Office for Cultural Diversity (4,000 euros). The 2019 jury is headed by multi- award-winning Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska, who is also responsible for this year’s opening film. Mitevska will be joined by two significant figures from the European festival scene: Magdalena Żelasko, founder and director of Vienna’s LET’S CEE Film Festival, and Stjepan Hundić, founder and director of Fantastic Zagreb Film Festival. They are joined by acclaimed Russian-German arthouse producer Anna Katchko. In addition, a dedicated jury representing FIPRESCI will present two International Film Critics’ Awards, for Best Fiction Feature and Best Documentary Film, to two films chosen from the Competition entries.
goEast Competition The goEast Competition presents a multi-facetted and sophisticated cross-section of Central and Eastern European filmmaking. The documentary STRIP AND WAR (Belarus, Poland, 2019) by East-West Talent Lab alumnus Andrei Kutsila, celebrating its world premiere at goEast, depicts a generational clash between a war veteran and his exotic dancer grandson while holding a mirror up to Belarusian society in the process. Beata Parkanová’s feature debut MOMENTS (CHVILKY, Czech Republic, Slovakia, 2018) revolves around a young woman who has to carve out her own path through the tangled growth of expectations and demands within the three generations of her family. In his coming-of-age drama ACID (KISLOTA, Russia, 2018) actor and director Alexander Gorchilin, a member of Kirill Serebrennikov’s Gogol Center ensemble, pulls his audience full force into the wild lives of a disillusioned
young Moscow clique and right into the middle of a sort of trench warfare between generations. Adilkhan Yerzhanov, who appeared at goEast for the first time in 2013 with his debut outing, tells the bittersweet story of a Kazakh family in THE GENTLE INDIFFERENCE OF THE WORLD (LASKOVOE BEZRAZLICHIE MIRA, Kazakhstan, France, 2018), a Mafia tragicomedy that takes its philosophical cues from Albert Camus. Elmar Imanov’s END OF SEASON (Germany, Azerbaijan, Georgia, 2019) is an evocative drama of emancipation set in a high rise housing estate in the sprawling Azerbaijani capital Baku. The documentary WHITE MAMA (BELAYA MAMA, Russia, 2018, directed by Zosya Rodkevich and Evgeniya Ostanina) also places the unusual fate of a large family centre-stage and shows with uncompromising honesty what happens when a mother’s emotional reserves gradually become exhausted. Ena Sendijarević’s debut film TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE (Netherlands, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2019) takes the audience along on a trip through Bosnia full of fresh, vibrant imagery, showing the Balkan country’s landscape and inhabitants through the eyes of a young woman discovering her roots for the first time. In HOME GAMES (DOMASHNI IGRI, Ukraine, France, Poland, 2018, directed by Alisa Kovalenko), young Ukrainian Alina struggles to reconcile her budding career as a professional footballer with her socially precarious family situation. Eszter Hajdú’s political documentary HUNGARY 2018 (Hungary, Portugal, 2018) offers a look behind the scenes at last year’s parliamentary election in Hungary. Historical themes from Central and Eastern Europe are also present in this year’s Competition section. With JAN PALACH (Czech Republic, Slovakia, 2018), director Robert Sedláček devotes himself to one of the most important figures in Czech cultural memory and probes what moves a young person to set themselves on fire in political protest. Set in Prishtina in 1992, COLD NOVEMBER (NËNTOR, FTOHTË, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, 2018, directed by Ismet Sijarina) treats the war in then-Yugoslavia and tells of life and survival during the darkest of times. Igor Drljača’s documentary THE STONE SPEAKERS (KAMENI GOVORNICI, Canada, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2018) directs our gaze to what has remained of multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina in the wake of state disintegration, system change and war, while revealing the grotesque excesses of tourism and allowing the locals to spin their yarns. The experimental nature film ACID FOREST (RŪGŠTUS MIŠKAS, Lithuania, 2018) by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, who will represent Lithuania at this year’s Venice Biennale, takes viewers out to the country’s Courland Spit and challenges our anthropocentric mentality with its apocalyptic atmosphere. With his freaky science-fiction drama HIS MASTER’S VOICE (AZ ÚR HANGJA, Hungary, Canada, 2018) Hungarian cult director Györgi Pálfi delivers an unorthodox and quirky Stanisław Lem adaptation that delights in transcending genre boundaries. It is the boundaries between truth and fiction that are blurred on the other hand for the protagonist in Anca Damian’s ambiguous noir thriller MOON HOTEL KABUL (Romania, France, 2018) about a journalist travelling on assignment between Kabul and Bucharest. After 2018’s Golden Lilly went to the Estonian film November, production company Homeless Bob is back once again in the goEast Competition with Kaur Kokk’s mysterious feature debut THE RIDDLE OF JAAN NIEMAND (PÕRGU JAAN Estonia, 2018). Kokk’s film is set in 18th century Estonia and features the camerawork of November cinematographer Mart Taniel. The perspectives and cinematic languages of this year’s Competition films are as refreshingly diverse as the themes they explore.
Accreditation and Press Conference Members of the press can still receive accreditation for goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film until 29 March by registering at: www.filmfestival-goeast.de/en/Press/accreditation
The press conference for the 19th edition of goEast will take place at 11 am on 4 April at Wiesbaden’s Caligari FilmBühne cinema. Please RSVP to attend the event.
Festival images are available for download at: www.filmfestival-goeast.de/de/presse/downloads
The full programme for the 19th edition of goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is available at: www.filmfestival-goeast.de/en/program
goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is hosted by DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum and supported by numerous partners. The festival is primarily funded by the State Capital Wiesbaden, the Hessen State Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts, Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, ŠKODA AUTO Deutschland, Renovabis, BHF BANK Foundation, Adolf und Luisa Haeuser-Stiftung für Kunst und Kulturpflege, the Federal Foreign Office and Deutsch-Tschechische Zukunftsfonds. Media partners include among others 3sat, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Deutschlandfunk Kultur.
