10. May 2012

598 minutes of Feature Film Competition

The total length of all productions shown in the feature film competition of the LET’S CEE Film Festival curated by me and my team amounts to 598 minutes. 598 minutes bearing witness to common and separating threads in the metonymy and the narrative style of feature films from Central and Eastern Europe.

Which witness exactly? Well, maybe the easiest way of identifying a common theme in all of the masterpieces is to assume that each film, with its own approach and its specific imminent concern, discusses identities within an association in the state of dissolution – a topic of interest (not only) in the CEE states. The strength of the characters created in this context or rather the individual approaches by the film makers towards adhering to formal constraints, while playing with the traditional genre patterns, reflects the cultural variety of Central and Eastern Europe.

From the historic drama Lidice to the experimental film Jannan ev dzainere/Joan and the Voices, the colorfully drawn characters in Zenne/Zenne – Dancer and the bitter reluctance of mankind against nature in Sibir, Monamour/Siberia Monamour, family disagreements from the gender role perpectives in Lahko noč, gospodična/Good Night, Missy und Toată lumea din familia noastră/Everybody in Our Family: It’s astonishing and exciting at the same time to watch how the directors implement their own style in their films, while creating atmospheric density.

One thing is certain: Be it a newcomer or an established film maker, each director in the competition stays true to both the respective film’s story as well as to his/her own vision of translating it onto the screen. This year’s selection leads us from Bucharest to Yerevan, from Ljubljana to Monamour in Siberia. As a – not only geographically – very large and not exactly defined area, CEE naturally provides sufficient space for a huge spectrum of different dramas. Thus, it was necessary to span a large gap in order to show – here in Vienna and within just one week – a selection of the best productions worth the name.

EU XXL FILM, my team and I are confident of having found enough different and outstanding playing fields of the genre of drama, which will hopefully find the audience’s sympathy as well. And that leaves us just one more thing to wish for: Good entertainment and good projection!