Das Filmfest is a film festival that promotes German-language cinema from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and will take place from November 2nd to 7th in Brno. Credit: Das FilmFest.
Brno, Oct 27 (BD) – Das Filmfest is a film festival that promotes German-language cinema, presenting films or documentaries from Germany, Austria and Switzerland that are otherwise unavailable outside those countries. The program ranges from the very niche to international award-winners, from underground films to documentaries.
The festival will be held in Brno’s Kino Art and No Art cinemas from November 2nd to 7th, and will be divided into four sections, each with a different theme. The main thematic lines are historical narratives of the last century, personal stories that develop against problematic social backgrounds, and comedies.
Festival Program
The themes are varied: the “personal stories” category covers themes such as domestic violence, perfectionism, emotional ties, drug addiction, and immigration. Another major trend in the program relates to the historical events of the last century, first and foremost the most recent and burning scar in contemporary German history: Nazism.
The first section is DAS FILMFEST SPEZIAL which includes “Curveball” (Curveball – Wir machen die Wahrheit) by Johannes Naber, which tells the true story of one of the greatest fake news stories in modern history: the production of biological weapons in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. “3friends2enemy”, a fresh comedy, “Exil” and “Berlin Alexanderplatz”, which address migration and related issues, and “Enfant Terrible”, a portrait of the legendary director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The section also includes “Glück gehabt”, a black comedy about a love triangle.
NO! / NÖ is a section dedicated to the theme of the challenges understood in a double direction, both towards oneself and towards others. In this section there are films dealing with domestic violence and emotional blackmail: “Der Taucher” by Günter Schwaiger; the drama “Until We Are Free” (Stürm: Bis wir tot sind oder frei) based on the true story of the criminal Walter Stürm, whose escape from prison in the 1970s and 1980s made him a symbol of the Swiss left against state violence state embodied by the police; “The Test” (Das Vorspiel), a film by director Ina Weisse providing a critique of the frantic pursuit of perfection in the glittering world of music.
The last section of the program is the section IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY (FAMILIENSACHE), which deals with both strong and toxic emotional and family ties, which therefore must be broken. The bittersweet odyssey “Oskar and Lili” (Ein bisschen bleiben wir noch) deals with the theme of migration and family relationships, the dramatic situation experienced by the children of migrants who find themselves entrusted to another family than their original one, and who do not accept this situation. “Girls from Needle Park” (Platzspitzbaby) tells the story of a little girl who is the daughter of a drug addict, while “The Trouble with Being Born” explores the power of memories, of desires, but also of emptiness.
The DIE DOKU section, dedicated to documentaries, will focus on issues related to the present rather than the last century.
Das Filmfest will open with Oscar-winning director Caroline Link’s film, “How Hitler Stole a Pink Rabbit” (Als Hitler das rosa Kaninchen stahl), which depicts the emigration of a Jewish family during Nazism, from the children’s point of view.
Other films presented at the Das FilmFestival are “Go to Moscow!” (Moskau Einfach!), based on real events, which reveals the 1989 spy scandal in Switzerland, in which 900,000 people were secretly spied on.
“Once upon a time there were two rebels …” (Waren einmal Revoluzzer) is a comedy that won the award for best director at the Max-Ophüls-Preis festival in 2020, about two couples who have to help a friend in difficulty. However, each of them interprets the term help in their own way.
