03/10/2013 - Film fest director Albert Wiederspiel talks about the 21st edition of the Filmfest Hamburg and its increasingly political profile

Emmanuelle Seigner, Tilda Swinton, Atom Egoyan, Isabella Rossellini and Hany Abu-Assad are among the international guests who are attending the 21st Filmfest Hamburg, which kicked off with the Canadian Oscar entry Gabrielle by writer/ director Louise Archambault. “We gain from the event character of the festival because the audience is looking for more than just a screening of a film when it goes to the cinema,” says Albert Wiederspiel, director of the Filmfest Hamburg. “The discussions after the film are a special experience for the cinemagoers. That is why we spend a huge part of our budget on inviting directors and actors so that they can personally present their movie.“

A special highlight is the presentation of the Douglas Sirk award that will be handed over to Scottish actress Tilda Swinton who stars in the romantic-comedy drama Only Lovers Left Alive [+see also:
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film profile]. In total, the Filmfest Hamburg shows 151 films from 56 countries.

“We have a progressively political profile,” emphasizes Albert Wiederspiel who let Jafar Panahi curate a retrospective with nine classic movies from Iran. “The National Film Institute in Teheran has the prints available but they are not allowed to send them abroad. Nevertheless we received a few films directly from producers from Iran, others from France. This is an unique opportunity to see a concentrated series of films that are forbidden in Iran.”  Among them is also Jafar Panahi's new film Closed Curtain as well as Manuscripts Don‘t Burn by Mohammad Rasoulof who could not attend the premiere in Hamburg because the Iranian authorities confiscated his passport when he visited his home country last month.

The 21st Filmfest Hamburg is going to close with the prize-winning drama Omar by Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad. One of the popular presenters at the award ceremony is actress Isabella Rossellini who will hand out the script award.