Julia Weigl and Christoph Gröner work in tandem as artistic director and managing director respectively of the Munich International Film Festival, one of the foremost events to discover emerging German filmmaking talents.
This year’s edition opens today, June 27, with a gala screening of James Griffiths’ UK comedy The Ballad Of Wallis Island at the city’s Gasteig HP8 arts centre.
Over 10 days the festival is screening 164 films from 54 countries, including 141 premieres. Actors Gillian Anderson and Stellan Skarsgard will be presented with this year’s CineMerit awards, while leading local production company Komplizen Film is the subject of an homage.
Weigl and Gröner talk to Screen about the rising German filmmakers to watch, the innovations to this year’s programme and the challenges they faced in preparing this year’s edition.
Who are the talents to watch out for in this year’s line-up of New German Cinema section?
JW: We have four very different films by women directors to be screened over the first weekend of the festival. To begin with, there’s Karla by the Munich-based filmmaker Christina Tournatzés, one of the most interesting period pieces we have seen coming out of Germany from a first-time filmmaker.
Then we’ll be showing Sechswochenamt by Jacqueline Jansen who is one of the talents who is going to shape the future of German cinema - and she didn’t even attend film school! Her film is absolutely no-budget, but it’s so precise in its filmmaking.
Then you have Jovana Reisinger, who is mainly known for her work as a novelist, but now gives her own spin on the Heimatfilm genre In The Name Of The Empress.It is a twist on identity issues and beauty obsessions. There is also Alison Kuhn’s absurd comedy Holy Meat which is extremely experimental and performative.
CG: The first weekend will also see the complete opposite with the world premiere of the Plura sisters’ remake of the cult comedy Mädchen Mädchen from 2001.
Many of the films in this year’s New German Cinema section have in common that they had very unconventional ways of being funded. That’s a sign of our times but also points to an explosion of creative freedom. When we saw Jacqueline Jansen’s film for the first time, we were impressed by its precision even though she was working with a shoestring budget.
We also have an experienced filmmaker like Dietrich Brüggemann with his chamber play Home Entertainment with a couple sitting on a sofa and reflecting on life, relationships and cinema itself. He also only had a minimal budget, but he just went ahead and made it, not only directing, but also producing, writing the music score, editing and also doing the production design.
Who are the international filmmakers are you particularly looking forward to welcoming at the festival this year?
JW: Jay Duplass with the international premiere of his solo directorial work The Baltimorons which we picked up at SXSW. We will be talking to him about his journey in independent filmmaking since making The Puffy Chair with his brother Mark 20 years ago, which we will also screen at the festival.
CG: We couldn’t be prouder Gillian Anderson, as a global icon of acting, will be here to receive the CineMerit Award before the screening of The Salt Path. We are very excited Stellan Skarsgard will be coming to present Sentimental Value. We’ve been able to organise a more intimate ceremony for a second CineMerit award to be awarded to him
The number of accredited professionals and filmgoers coming to the festival in 2024 was up 25% on the previous year to 71,000, including more than 2,600 professionls from the German and international film industry. How are you expanding to meet demand?
JW: Film festivals are probably the most flexible of structures and they are used to changing and shifting all the time, as the pandemic showed very well. Losing the Sendlinger Tor Cinema venue, which had traditionally been the home for the New German Cinema section, was very sad but we have now found new possibilities and new venues to present our films. There is still a little bit of wiggle room for us to grow and we are aiming at a total of 3,000 accredited professionals in the future.
CG: Which means we still have the space of growing by about another 10% in the coming years. What we want to maintain is this special summer feeling which brings people together in a laidback way coupled with the highest quality.
What is new for this year?
JW: We are happy to collaborate with the Queer Media Society on its award for the best queer feature-length format. We started this collaboration on a smaller scale at the Festival of Future Storytellers last November with an award for a queer short film.
Representation and visibility of queer films and filmmakers has not necessarily grown given the conservative mindset currently holding sway internationally. We felt that it was the right moment to do so and hopefully it will become Munich’s answer to the Berlinale’s Teddy Award.
And we’re now collaborating this year with the Festival der Zukunft on exploring the intersection of science and film through the medium of XR and VR.
CG: We will be having the Creators Conference by the German Producers Alliance at the beginning of the festival and a local think tank, the Munich Film Summit, will be held on the final weekend to discuss the possibilities of different synergies with the policy makers.
What have been the biggest challenges of organising this year’s festival?
CG: Our shareholders have placed a great deal of confidence in us - and we had a stable situation of funding for our first two editions. With that backing, we have been able to attract new partners from the arts field as well as private companies. [New partners for this year inlcude Festival der Zukunft, XR Hub Bavaria, Munich’s Residenztheater, media lawyer Freshfields,and Germany’s producers’ association Produktionsallianz]. At the same time, we are living in difficult times which is affecting arts funding in general, so you have to react from one year to the next to developments.
JW: On a positive note, we are all in the same boat with other cultural institutions and film festivals, which means that there is more solidarity and networking among the players. We have the AG Filmfestival here in Germany where all the big and smaller film festivals are talking to each other and forming a lobbying force. And that’s also happening on a local level in Munich with cooperations and collaborations with other festivals and cultural institutions.
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