Wiesbaden 2008

The 8th Festival of Middle and East-European Cinema in Wiesbaden ended with a great success for the Estonian movie Magnus (2007), the first film by 26-year-old Kadri Kõusaar. It won the main prize, The Golden Lily (which carried 10,000 Euros with it), as well as the FIPRESCI prize. Inspired by real events, Magnus tells the story of the relationship between a hedonistic father and his sensitive son who commits suicide after a long odyssey through the reality of modern Estonian society.
    Among the other prize winners were Love and Other Crimes (Ljubav i drugi zlocini, 2008) by Stefan Arsenijevic and The Flower Bridge (Podul di flori, 2007) by Thomas Ciulei. The Wiesbaden competition included ten features and six documentaries.
    The well organized symposium "Iconography and Nation (Re-)Building" gave an overview about film documents of the Ex-Yugoslavian region. During the festival there were also homages to Armenian director Sergei Parajanov (1924-1990) and Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf (born in 1974). The Robert Bosch Foundation offered young German filmmakers the opportunity to discuss their new short films and documentary projects with producers, directors and cameramen from East and Southeast Europe. And the Russian film archive Gosfilmofond presented the compilation Hessen Country (Das Land Hessen, 2008) with sequences from old Russian documentaries about the German region Hessen and a restored version of the Boris Barnet movie The House on Trubnaya (Dom Na Trubnoy, 1928).
    More than 6,000 people came to the Wiesbaden festival: a terrific success for festival director Christine Köpf and her team. (Ralf Schenk)

goEast — Festival of Central and Eastern European Film, Wiesbaden, April 9-15, 2008, www.filmfestival-goeast.de
FIPRESCI Prize: Magnus by Kadri Kõusaar (Estonia, Great Britain 2007). Details

Reports:

The Right Moment. Ralf Schenk is very impressed by the powerful Magnus, inspired by the high suicide rate in Estonia, and considers the debutante director, Kadri Kõusaar, an "outstanding talent to watch".
Lust, Corruption. Annika Koppel enjoys three films from East Europe — Serbia, Ukraine and Russia — in which she finds many hopeful aspects beneath the gloomy surface .
Looking East. Jan Olszewski sees a thematic link between ten films in the Wiesbaden competition — the affect, direct or otherwise, of Soviet domination in the countries of East Europe — and draws sombre conclusions.

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