The 23rd International Braunschweig Film Festival (November 10th-15th, 2009) is starting with a real home match: the Film Festival is opening with Carsten Ludwig’s and Jan-Christoph Glaser’s film “66/67 – Fairplay war yesterday“. The film with Fabian Hinrichs (“Sophie Scholl“) and Christoph Bach (“Dutschke“) relates of the friendship between six Eintracht Braunschweig fans and was filmed in Braunschweig in the summer of 2008.
The main festival prize, the “European Actors Award“, goes to the British actor, John Hurt. The award, worth 10,0000 euros, for outstanding acting performances and contributions to European film culture has been contributed by the main sponsor of the Film Festival, Volkswagen Financial Services AG. In honour of Hurt, the Film Festival is showing a retrospective of, amongst others, Michael Radford’s “1984“, the film biography “An Englishman in New York“ from 2009, Hurt’s first big success, “The Naked Civil Servant“ (1975), and David Lynch’s “Elephant Man“. The award speech will be held by Jens Meurer (Egoli Tossell) who produced “Shooting Dogs“ with John Hurt in the main role in 2005.
The competitors for the Audience Award for European Debut and Second Films, “Der Heinrich“ were selected from over 90 submitted films. The ten films from nine countries – amongst them several German first films – are the Oscar candidate “Bad day to go fishing“ by Alvaro Brechner (Spain/Uruguay, 2009), “Bollywood Hero“ by Diederik van Rooijen (Netherlands 2009), “The Father of my Children“ by Mia Hansen- Løve (France/Germany 2009), “Night of the Fighter“ by Dushan Gligorov (Russia 2009), “Mensch Kotschie“ by Norbert Baumgarten (Germany 2009), “Be Good“ by Juliette Garcias (France/Denmark 2009), “The Clown“ by Marco Pontecorvo (Italy 2008), “The Wish Tree“ by Liina Paakspuu (Estonia 2008), the football film, excitingly starring Michael Sheen, “The Damned United“ by Tom Hooper (Great Britain 2009) and “Wrong Rosary“ by Mahmut Fazil Ciskun (Turkey 2009).
The prize money of 10,000 euros, donated by Volkswagen Financial Services AG, goes half to the director(s) and half to the film distributors. The German video subtitling is sponsored by Titelbild, Berlin.
For the third time the German-French Youth Prize KINEMA will be awarded by a jury of four. Under the chairmanship of director Michael Hofmann (“Sophiiiie!”), the young jurors will choose the award-winner from six German and French language debut and second films: “13 Semester” by Frieder Wittich, “Draußen am See” (“Out at the Lake”) by Felix Fuchssteiner, “Mensch Kotschie” by Norbert Baumgarten, “Le père de mes enfants” (“The Father of my Children”) by Mia Hansen-Løve, “Sois sage” (“Be Good”) by Juliette Garcias and “Joueuse” (“The Chess-player”) by Caroline Bottaro.
20 contributions are competing for the Short Film Music Award “Der Leo”, with prize money of 2000 euros. The jury of four is made up of film composer Christine Aufderhaar (“Die Entdeckung der Currywurst” / “The Discovery of the Curry Sausage”), director Marco Mittelstaedt (“Im nächsten Leben” / “In the Next Life”) and the two film journalists, Andrea Dittgen and Sven Ahnert. The Stiftung Braunschweiger Land has sponsored the award.
Star guest of the category “Music and Film“ is the composer Alexandre Desplat, who is just as successful in Hollywood as in France. A seven-part retrospective is dedicated to the Frenchman, twice nominated for an Oscar, amongst others, with his new film “L’armée du crime” by Robert Guédiguian which had its premiere in Cannes this year and the new film by Stephen Frears, “Cheri”, with Michelle Pfeiffer.
For the French “Traffic Quintet” he specifically composed interpretations of well-known Nouvelle Vague films. The film concert “Nouvelles Vagues” in the “Kleines Haus” of the State Theater takes place in cooperation with the Braunschweig State Orchestra. In the “Music Master Class” film music expert, Siegfried Tesche, with the help of film extracts, will talk to Alexandre Desplat about his method of working.
In a further film concert, the Braunschweig State Theatre is putting on a rerun of Carl Lamac’s early sound film “Der Zinker“ from 1931. “Der Zinker” is based on Edgar Wallace’s novel called “The Squeaker”. Florian Reithner composed the music and allowed himself to be inspired by the popular music of the era between the wars.
The participants of the Workshop “Create your own score!” are playing in the supporting programme of the concert in the “Neue Oberschule”. Under the directing of the composer Stephan von Bothmer, they will be putting on their own self-composed music which they have only worked on for four days. The workshop takes place in the rooms of the Music Academy and is sponsored by the Stiftung Pruesse.
With the category “Vistas Latinas“, the Film Festival draws our attention to contemporary Latin-American cinema. Seven current productions, including several premieres, give an insight into the directors’ views of life and impress us with new aesthetic forms of expression. “Corazón del tiempo“ (“Heart of Time“) by Alberto Cortés from Mexico tells of a conflict in the mountains of Chiapas by means of a love story. “Dioses” (“Gods”) by Joué Méndez, a Peruvian-Argentine co-production, comes to Braunschweig with the premature praise of 35 festival awards. 
The spiritual documentary drama “El regalo de la Pachamama” (“The Gift of Pachamama”) by Toshifumi Matsushita takes us to the native inhabitants of Bolivia. “La Milagrosa” (“The Miraculous”), by Rafael Lara, relates of an abduction in the Columbian civil war. The story of a housekeeper is told in “La Nana” (“The Maid”) by Sebastián Silva from Chile and Mexico. “Sin Nombre” from Mexico is Cary Joji Fukanaga’s film about a person who drops out of a Mexican gang.
A special focus in this film category has been put on the ICAIC, the Cuban Film Institute, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. Five feature films and six short films make up the film series supervised by the film-maker and lecturer, Claudia von Alemann, in which doyens like Enrique Pineda Barnet with “La Anunciacíon” (“The Annunciation”) and young talents like Susana Barriga Rodrígues with “Patria” are represented.
The Film Festival is also showing the first directing work of actress Hanna Schygulla. The winner of the first “European Actors Award” had announced in 2007 that she would invest her prize money in a camera in order to make a film. Now she comes back to Braunschweig with a film homage to her Cuban friend, the actress Alicia Bustamante.
With 15 films from 10 countries, the series “New International Cinema“shows a world-embracing programme. “The Orange Girl” by Eva Dahr comes from Norway. The Film Festival shows the German premiere of the Chinese award-winning (in San Sebastian) anti-war film “City of Life and Death” by Chuan Lu about the massacre of Nanjing in 1937 which shows the brutal events in a very different light to the German production “John Rabe”. “Departures” by Yojiro Takitaaus comes from Japan and was awarded the Oscar for the best foreign film.
The candidate for the next foreign Oscar is the Norwegian production “Max Manus” by Espen Sandberg and Joachim Roenning. In the Maguerite-Duras filming, “The Sea Wall”, by the Cambodian Rithy Panh, Isabelle Huppert plays the leading role. In “8”, eight internationally renowned directors, from Jane Campion to Wim Wenders, think about how to bring about the development goals of halving world poverty by the year 2015 which were formulated by 191 countries of the world in the year 2000.
Also in this category are the two New York films: “Whatever works”, the new Woody Allen film as well as “New York, I love you”, the teamwork of eleven filmmakers, including actor stars like Andy Garcia, Natalie Portman and “Europa” award-winner, John Hurt, as well as directors like Shekhar Kapur and Fatih Akin.
The Hamburg Fatih Akin is also in the category “New German Films” with his newest film “Soul Kitchen” with Moritz Bleibtreu in the leading role. In addition, the following are also represented in the new German films: Florian Eichinger’s “Bergfest” (“Mountain Party”), Jessica Hausner’s “Lourdes” with Sylvie Testud, “This is Love” by Matthias Glasner, with Corinna Harfouch and Jürgen Vogel.
The Film Festival continues the exchange with Haute-Normandie which has been going since 2002 with a programme of four short films from the Lower Saxony partner region.
The portrait of a graduate from the film class of the Braunschweig University of Art is dedicated this year to the filmmaker and head of Animation at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Gerd Gockell.
27.10.2009