08/04/2005

The GoEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Films, organised by the Deutsche Filminstitut, which has become, since it was created in 2001, complementary with the traditional Cottbus Festival (in Autumn), has just started. From the 6th to the 12th of April, GoEast presents a selection of 118 films from 23 Central and Eastern European countries divided into 7 different sections.

Ten fiction features and six documentaries will run for, respectively, a Golden Lily and the Best Documentary Award (€10,000 each). This year’s President of the Jury is the famous Polish director, Robert Glinski. Besides Russia which is predominant, with four movies in competition (including Goddess, the directorial debut of the Russian diva Renata Litvinova), Serbia is well represented too, with three films, including Boris Mitic’s documentary Pretty Dyana, an original vision of the daily life of a group of gypsies. The other big challengers are the Czech Republic, with two films —including the dark comedy Champions by Marek Najbrt— and Poland, with a fiction feature (Stranger by Malgorzata Szumowska) and a documentary by Maciej Cuske. Other prizes will be granted : the FIPRESCI, the Public’s Prize, the best Student’s Film —this section being one of the specificities of GoEast.
This year, as Christine Kopf, head of the festival, explained, special emphasis will be put on the new members of the European Union, not only on the screen, but also in the special events which are also part of the festival. There will indeed be a series of meetings, a conference on identity in post-communist countries, a panel discussion on the future of the Balkans, and exhibitions, one of which is dedicated to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine... This predominantly political perspective reflects Eastern European cinema’s main tendency to focus on the 1990’s, years of turmoil and of change.
The full programme is available on festival website.

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(Translated from French)