Inshallah A Boy by Jordan’s Amjad Al Rasheed, which premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week, and Paradise Is Burning by the Swedish director Mika Gustafson, a Venice Horirzons debut earlier this month, will bookend this year’s Filmfest Hamburg, taking place from September 28 to October 7) as the opening and closing films.
The programme of 132 feature films includes the German premieres of Venice titles including Yorgos Lanthimos’ Golden Lion winner Poor Things, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist, and Sofia Coppola’s biopic Priscilla, and festival favourites from throughout the year including debuts from Iranian-Australian director Noora Niasari (Shayda), the UK’s Molly Manning Walker (How To Have Sex), Brazil’s Lillah Halla (Power Alley) and Austria’s Adrian Goinginger (Rickerl - Musik is höchstens a Hobby).
This year’s ‘Contemporary cinema in focus’ sidebar is dedicated to the filmmakers Alice Rohrwacher and Bertrand Bonello, with screenings of onello’s latest feature The Beast which premiered in Venice last week as well as Rohrwacher’s Cannes competition title La Chimera.
Festival-goers will be able to meet Bonello and follow a discussion about his work after a screening of his 2014 film Saint Laurent in Hamburg’s Metropolis cinema on October 3, while Rohrwacher will talk a day earlier at the same venue after a presentation of her debut feature Corpo Celeste from 2011.
According to the Filmfest’s organisers, the makers of 93 films selected for this year’s line-up - including Catherine Breillat, Wim Wenders, Ken Loach and Mads Mikkelsen - are expected in Hamburg to represent their works in person.
Sandra Hüller will be presented with this year’s prestigious Douglas Sirk Award, at a ceremony following the German premiere of the Palme d’Or winning Anatomy Of A Fall. The award is named after the director born in Hamburg as Detlef Sierck.
Total prize money of €115,000 will be presented to films in the various sections, including the Hamburg Producer Award for German Cinema Productions, the Hamburg Producer Award for International Cinema Co-Productions, the Art Cinema Award, the Audience Award, and, for the first time this year, the new MAJA Film Award for a film screening in the MICHEL - Kinder und Jugend Filmfest programme.
Seven German feature films are screening in the festival’s Grosse Freiheit sidebar and re in contention for the Hamburg Producer Award for German Cinema Production, including Timm Kröger’s Venice competition title The Theory Of Everything, two debut features from Locarno - Katharina Huber’s A Good Place and Swiss director Katharina Ludin’s Living Without Illusion, actress Aylin Tezel’s directorial debut Falling Into Place and veteran filmmaker Michael Klier’s Zwischen Uns Der Fluss.
The 31st edition of the festival will be the last for festival director Albert Wiederspiel after 10 years at the helm. He will be succeeded by Malika Rabahallah, presently head of the funding department at Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein’s regional film fund MOIN (Moving Images North), who wil take over on January 1, 2024.
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