International Competition

The selection of the International Competition is dominated by social, political, and aesthetic issues and circumstances. The environment matters and the political situation is not far away. The films give us intense insights into our surroundings but also those things that are farer away and removed from our gaze, yet still all around us. It is particularly remarkable that people who decide to leave their homes are not out of sight but rather in the centre of attention with their stories and their questions, with their mourning and their love.

Arnold Schwarzenegger enchantingly explains why body building is a type of sculptural work to an interviewer, casting a spell on him in the process. The filmic miniature as possibility for condensation and poetry on the one side, the contemporary narrative as a wild road movie from the US on the other – “And She Hisses, letter to  a friend” by Emily Jacir, who had been a member of last year’s jury for the German Competition, shows us what a journey to Jerusalem can mean and how cultural drifts can bar the way in a tangible manner. The American film critic and film maker Ricky D’Ambrose arranges a group of friends in front of New York’s skyline and the view on the famous towers gains a new layer. Causes of death. The South African film maker Jyoti Mystri thinks uncompromisingly within the system’s contradictions. Her film is not easy to digest, it lodges itself within the body and makes it palpable. This is art’s most urgent task: to feel us, and that is exactly what the films of the International and the German competition are doing: They experience us.

Film selection: Alejo Franzetti, Anna Feistel, Felix Piatkowski, Maike Mia Höhne, Marian Freistühler, Pierre Bagieu, Theresa George, Thorkil Asmussen, Vanessa Nica Mueller