Films by Richard Linklater, Oliver Laxe and Joachim Trier are among 53 titles selected by the Munich International Film Festival for its four main competition strands CineMasters, CineVision, CineRebels and CineCoPro. Munich runs from June 27 to July 6.
CineMasters
Oliver Laxe’s Sirat will be joined by another two Cannes 2025 Official Competition titles - Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague and Mascha Schilinski’s award-winning Sound Of Falling - to screen in the CineMasters competition for the €15,000 CineMasters Award. The prize is being sponsored for the first time this year by Dorint Hotels & Resorts and is presented to the director of the best international film.
The 14-title line-up also includes Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, Nadav Lapid’s Yes, Alexandra Makarová’s Perla, and Erige Sehiri’s Promised Sky which was shown in the Un Certain Regard 2025 selection:
Gábor Reisz’s Explanation For Everything was the winner of the CineMasters competition last year.
CineVision
The CineVision competition’s line-up of 14 international films by emerging directors includes two films fresh from their world premieres in Cannes this May - Harris Dickinson’s homelessness drama Urchin and Amélie Bonnin’s musical comedy Leave One Day - as well as Linh Duoing Dieu’s fantasy comedy Don’t Cry, Butterfly, Elena Oxman’s queer coming-of-age story Outerlands and French-Japanese director Koya Kamura’s drama Winter In Sokcho.
The €10,000 CineVision Award, which has a new sponsor this year with Adobe, was won in 2024 by the Argentine filmmaker Federico Luis’s provocative drama Simon of the Mountain.
CineRebels
Meanwhile, Elisabeth Lo’s MIstress Dispeller, Lav Diaz’s psychological drama Phantosmia, and actor-director Albert Birney’s sci-film film Obex are another 14 titles selected for the CineRebels competition which is dedicated to “format breakers, film adventurers and cinephile film taste”.
The films competing for the €15,000 award, sponsored by Audi, also include Pedro Pinho’s Un Certain Regard 2025 title I Only Rest In The Storm and the world premiere of the documentary essay Show Me The Pain of the World by the German-Slovenian directorial team of Marc Steck and Tjasa Kosar through their production company fucktheprivilegeofignorance (FTPOI).
Launched in 2022, the third CineRebels Award was presented in 2024 to Vietnamese director Minh Quý Truoing’s queer drama Viet and Nam.
CineCoPro Award
The Filmfest’s fourth main competitive strand sees German production partners of 11 international co-productions competing for the third CineCoPro Award with a cash prize of € 100,000 donated by FFF Bayern to be invested in a future co-production.
An independent jury of the European Film Academy’s CEO Mathjis Wouter Knol, German producer Jochen Laube of Sommerhaus Filmproduktion and Anne Carey, president of Film & TV at Purple Pebble Pictures, will decide on the winner from a line-up which includes Cuban-born director Pavel Giroud’s romantic comedy Comandante Fritz, Argentine filmmaker Celina Murga’s drama The Freshly Cut Grass, Ute Briesewitz’s mystery thriller American Sweatshop,and Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value which had its premiere last month in Cannes’ Official Competition where it took home the Grand Prix.
Last year’s CineCoPro Award went last year to Salaud Morriset, the German co-producer of Mahdi Fleifel’s To A Land Unknown.
Homage for Komplizen Film
The Filmfest’s second edition under the leadership of festival director Christoph Gröner and artistic director Julia Weigl, opens on June 28 with James Griffiths’ comedy drama The Ballad of Wallis Island. It closes with Christian Petzold’s Miroirs No. 3 on July 5
The festival will also be dedicating an Homage to the production company Komplizen Film which was founded by Janine Jackowski and Maren Ade during their studies at Munich’s University Television and Film (HFF München) in 1999.
The Homage will consist of screenings of Ade’s 2003 debut feature The Forest for the Trees, Sonja Heiss’ 2007 debut Hotel Very Welcome, and the company’s co-production of Pablo Larraín’s Maria which premiered in competition at Venice last year.
Komplizen Film is also the German co-producer of Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value which will be competing for the CineCoPro Award.
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