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FESTIVALS Spain

¡Viva el festival de cine alemán!

by 

Can you really have success with a film that's set in the frostiest of winters in a country where the siesta is unavoidable in the summer. The ninth Festival of German Films in Madrid (5 – 9 June, 2007) was proof that you can!

The Spanish audience was won over by the Bavarian charm and humour when the opening film Heavyweights by Marcus H. Rosenmueller was shown in the Cine Palafox on 5 June in the presence of the producers Viola Jaeger, Molly von Fuerstenberg, Harald Kuegler and the German Shooting Star 2007 Maximilian Brueckner.

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The spectators were also enthralled by Autopilots by Bastian Guenther, Prisoners by Iain Dilthey, the children's film Silly's Sweet Sumemr by Johannes Schmid and the documentary Losers and Winners by Ulrike Franke. Not only were many questions directed at the above-mentioned directors after the screenings, the films also received lots of praise. Karl Tebbe, who had travelled to Madrid as the representative of the Next Generation program, attracted a very positive reaction with his short Infinite Justice.

The film Vier Minuten [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Chris Kraus (read the interview) received the hotly contested Audience Award at the end of the festival.

The retrospective presented the winners of the Academy Award for best foreign language film: The Tin Drum by Volker Schloendorff, Nowhere in Africa by Caroline Link y The Lives of Others by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck were very well received.

There was thunderous applause in particular for the silent film Faust by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau which was presented by the F. W. Murnau Foundation and German Films and accompanied musically by Aljoscha Zimmermann and Sabrina Hausmann.

At a Distribution Support Dinner organised by German Films, German sales agents used the opportunity to cultivate their contacts with the five most important Spanish distributors (Alta Films, Karma Films, Wanda Visions, Gaia Films, Flins & Piniculas).

As a result of the many acquisitions of German films, Spain is one of the most important partners and received the most funding from the Distribution Support Program in 2006.

The festival was attended by around 4,000 spectators. It looks as if the successful course for German cinema in Spain is far from coming to a close.

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