Mannheim-Heidelberg 2006

The words "Happiness and Adventure" and a couple kissing in a corner of a room next to a relief painting showing a beautiful old fashioned sailboat. This scene from the astonishing short film Empty (Tühirand) from Estonia on the festival poster already showed what the 55th edition of the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg in Germany wants to be: a place for discoveries in emotions and pictures. It's a festival for the audience, 30,000 people are watching the movies every year, mostly first and second feature films in the international competition, but there is also a short film competition, a sidebar called "international discoveries" and a prize of honor for an acclaimed director which will be called "master of cinema". He receives a diploma and some of his movies are shown; this year the honor went to Aleksandr Sokurov form Russia. The FIPRESCI jury decided to give their prize to Franck Guérin from France and his first feature film A Summer Day (Un jour d'été), an extraordinary story about love and soccer and death and growing up.

International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg, 55th edition, November 16-25
Details of the FIPRESCI prize

Reports:

France. The two French films in competition "A Summer day" by Franck Guérin and "Stolen Holiday" by Olivier Peyon, both first feature films, show "deep understanding for complex human emotions" according to Eero Tammi.

Parents. "The influence of the parents in a child's life, the hidden secrets that threaten to destroy a family's harmony, the strong and intense relations among brothers, childhoods in danger — those were the themes that marked the most attractive and solid films of this year's festival", writes Joel Poblete referring to "Sons" from Norway and "The Art of Crying" from Denmark.

Europe. According to Fatih Özgüven most of the films in the competition had a strong thematic preoccupation with the Europeans, both on the level of the stories of individuals and of more collective tales and reflect on female characters in search of themselves.

Love. "Filmmakers are aware that in a post-modern world with the two extremes, melancholy and ecstasy, love is a game, love is manipulation and love is a theatre playing with masks. It is not possible to talk directly about the feelings, because today love functions rather like a clever idea and myth". Pawel Thomasz Felis explains this point of view with six chosen films.

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