Georgian Film Wins Main Prize at goEast Film Festival

Wide-ranging programme in Wiesbaden rouses enthusiastic audience response

(Wiesbaden, 27 April 2010) Films from Georgia, Hungary, Israel and Russia have emerged victorious from the tenth goEast film festival. The 2010 Festival of Central and Eastern European Film closed this Tuesday evening with festive awards ceremony in Wiesbaden. “The contemporary films of our Eastern European friends and neighbours are no longer exotic outsiders in the cinema landscape. The films shown at goEast testify to a multifaceted and aesthetically ambitious filmmaking landscape. The popularity of these productions is likely to increase outside the international festival circuit, too – we can expect a lot from the future!” was the concluding statement from festival director Nadja Rademacher.

Ten feature films and six documentaries were competing for the range of festival prizes, worth 29,500 euros in total, awarded by an international presided over by the Russian film critic Andrey Plakhov. The Škoda Award – the Golden Lily for Best Film (10,000 euros), donated by Škoda Auto Deutschland – goes to STREET DAYS / QUCHIS DGEEBI (Georgia 2010) by Levan Koguashvili, whose film the jury saw as reviving the best tradition of Georgian neo-realistic film. The City of Wiesbaden Award for Best Director (7,500 euros) goes to Hungarian filmmaker József Pacskovszky for DAYS OF DESIRE / A VÁGYAKOZÁS NAPJAI (Hungary 2009). The jury was convinced by the film’s description of the individual's struggle with the expectations of a rapidly changing society. The “Remembrance and Future” documentary award (10,000 euros) of the foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” goes to OY MAMA / OY MAMA (Israel 2009) by Orna Ben Dor and Noa Maiman for its “tender portrayal” of Maiman’s grandmother, a Holocaust survivor.
Alexey Popogrebskiy won over two juries at once with HOW I ENDED THIS SUMMER / KAK YA PROVEL ETIM LETOM (Russia 2010). The outstanding visual quality of this work gained the Award of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany for a competitive film possessing “artistic originality that creates cultural diversity” (2,000 euros). Moreover, the same film was chosen for the International Film Critics’ Award (FIPRESCI Prize, 2,000 euros).

The festival jury gave an honourable mention to the achievement of actor Victor Rebengiuc in MEDAL OF HONOR / MEDALIA DE ONOARE (Romania, Germany 2009). An honourable mention was also given to the documentary film COUNTRYSIDE 35 x 45 / GLUBINKA 35 x 45 (Russia, 2009).

With its Co-production Prize for young filmmakers from East and West, the foundation Robert Bosch Stiftung distinguishes during goEast promising film projects in the three separate categories of Short Film, Animation and Documentary. Overall, the prize entails funding up to 210,000 euros. The winner in the Short Film category is PANIHIDA, a Moldavian-German co-production by director Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu and producer Jonas Weydemann. The jury was convinced by the team’s outstanding presentation of the plot about a seemingly absurd funeral procession through a Moldavian village. The prize in the Animated Film category goes to the German-Bulgarian project FATHER involving five directors – Asparuh Petrov (Bulgaria), Dim Yagodin (Russia), Moritz Mayerhofer (Germany), Rosita Raleva (Bulgaria) and Veljko Popovic (Croatia) – and the producers Maria Stanisheva (Bulgaria), Vanja Andrijevic (Croatia) and Christian Müller (Germany). In their five-part episodic film, the young filmmakers illustrate their perspective on father-and-child relations in dramatic but humorous fashion. Winner in the Documentary category is the Kazakh-German project SEATOMORROW by director Katerina Suvorova and producers Stephan Grobe and Anna Hoffmann, which deals with people fighting for the return of the water to the devastated yet visually overwhelming landscape of the Aral Sea.

As part of the Students‘ Competition, the Promotional Prize of BHF-BANK Foundation is awarded to the best entry from a participating film school from Eastern Europe. The three-strong jury distinguished Rok Biček (UL AGRFT, Ljubljana) for his film LOV NA RACE / DUCK HUNTING, emphasizing the surprising dramatic structure of the film. An honourable mention went to the animated film DRUGAYA / THE ONE WHO WAS DIFFERENT by Anna Shepilova (VGIK, Moscow), a film which impressed the jury for its unspoken communication of the characters emotions in all their ambiguity.

The goEast Reinhard Kämpf Memorial Prize (1,000 euros) goes to the documentary OSADNÉ / OSADNÉ (Slovakia, Czech Republic 2009) by Marko Škop.

In the week from 21 to 27 April, more than 300 guests from Germany and abroad took up the invitation to come to Wiesbaden for the festival, which has been staged by Deutsches Filminstitut – DIF since 2001. In the course of 7 days, 121 films from 35 different countries were shown; 48 presentations were premiere screenings. The screening of merely two films was prevented by the travel chaos caused by volcanic ash. The Awards Ceremony of the jubilee goEast edition was hosted by Vladimir Kaminer. The Berlin-based author and DJ subsequently transformed Wiesbaden’s Kulturpalast venue into a “Russian Disco”.

Tomorrow’s cinema in Students’ Competition
Audiences responded enthusiastically to the showcase given to the “films of tomorrow” in the Students’ Competition, which this year invited the participation of VGIK, Moscow, UL AGRFT, Ljubljana, and students in the Rhine-Main region as well as Cologne and Kassel.
The programme celebrating the festival’s tenth birthday highlighted filmmakers who literally “grew up” alongside goEast. These special festival guests were directors who presented their debut films at goEast, and have since established their reputations in the film world, among them the Russian filmmakers Boris Khlebnikov and Peter Buslov.

Current productions, Symposium, and Homage
On Friday alone, some 900 visitors flocked to festival screenings at the Caligari FilmBühne. A strong attraction was exercised not just by current productions; the blend of science fiction and screwball comedy offered by Juliusz Machulski’s SEX MISSION / SEXMISJA (Poland 1984) filled every seat in the Murnau-Filmtheater. The Polish classic ran as part of the goEast Symposium “Liberating Laughter – A Short History of Eastern European Film Humour”, an examination of comic film headed by Professor Oksana Bulgakowa of the Institute of Film Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
A powerful attraction was also exercised by the goEast Homage, which culminated in a public discussion with Georgian-French director Otar Iosseliani. The festival presented a cross-section of the master-director’s body of work across five decades, beginning with the shorts Iosseliani made as a student.

Funders and partners of goEast
goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is made possible by the funding and support received from the Hessen State Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts; the City of Wiesbaden, state capital of Hessen; Robert Bosch Stiftung; the foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”; Škoda Auto Deutschland. Funding is also received from the BHF-BANK Foundation. Substantial assistance comes from the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Hessen-Thüringen, and Nassauische Sparkasse (Naspa).

The jubilee festival also sees the launch of an official media partnership with 3sat, the broadcaster which has cooperated with goEast from the first edition onward, as well as a new festival blog at http://blog.zdf.de/goeast/