goEast turns ten

by Bénédicte Prot

23/04/2010 - In a season when Europe is celebrated with enthusiasm, notably in Lecce, Ravenna and Linz, the German city of Wiesbaden is hosting the 10th goEast Film Festival (April 21-27), which opened on Wednesday evening with the national premiere of collective Russian film Crush.

From among 300 submitted works, the event’s artistic director Swetlana Sikora selected the 16 titles in competition (ten narrative films and six documentaries), which represent current production from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans and the Caucasus. This year’s edition focuses on the theme of belonging, in a geographical, political, historical and social sense.

The line-up includes Romanian director Peter Calin Netzer’s Medal of Honor [trailer], about a man rejected by his family who is mistakenly awarded a medal of merit; Vasha by Finland’s Hannu Salonen; Hungarian titles The Days of Desire by József Pacskovszky and Transmission by Roland Vranik; and Andrei Dăscălescu’s Constantin and Elena, about an ordinary love affair that has lasted for over 50 years in a Romanian village.

Also on the programme are Branko Schmidt’s Metastases, described as a "Croatian version of Trainspotting"; Serbian director Želimir Žilnik’s The Old School of Capitalism, which looks at his country’s painful entry into the global economy and the resistance to this system by combining archive footage and filmed scenes; Marko Škop’s Osadné, which bears the name of a village in the Slovakian Carpathians which would like its place on the EU map; and Robert Gliński’s Piggies, about a young Polish boy living near the German border, who prostitutes himself so he can offer his girlfriend the luxury products and affluent lifestyle she desires.

Audiences will also get the chance to discover the "Specials" sidebar; the section devoted to shorts by industry newcomers and students; and the "Highlights" section including five "not-to-be-missed" titles that won acclaim at home and at festivals.

The "Signature" section focuses on movies that go against the grain, like Corneliu Porumboiu’s Romanian film Police, Adjective [trailer, film focus] and The Forest by Poland’s Piotr Dumała.

This year, homage will be paid to Georgia’s Otar Iosseliani. To mark its tenth anniversary, goEast is also hosting a Jubilee section whose keynote is dialogue and an intriguing symposium on the theme of humour in Eastern European films.

(Translated from French)