FILMFEST DRESDEN: Europe in Flux – Taking Back Control!
In 1989, when FILMFEST DRESDEN was founded, Europe looked very different. The first festival edition took place under the Soviet rule and showcased censored and forbidden films. With the fall of the wall not long after, the festival embarked on a new journey focusing on short films. In the 90s rundown Neustadt district of Dresden, where the festival is located, anything seemed possible until this day. The times were somewhat unruly at first, but with a new order being slowly installed in Europe, the festival, too, found its footing, and with the beginning of the new millennium, started to grow into an internationally renowned event. Nowadays, it boasts a wide network of European partnerships and welcomes up to 20,000 people from all over the world.
The programme is presented in cooperation with Filmfest Dresden.
Europe in Flux: Taking Back Control! But as Europe undergoes rapid change, this seeming peace is under jeopardy. For the past ten years or more, right-wing populism has grown, bringing with it fresh hate and violent trends. It appears that we are travelling in reverse, back to the starting point of an undesirable road.
Our freedom is threatened. These days, it seems as though the word ‘freedom’ is used extremely loosely. Freedom of opinion is often exploited as a pretext for offensiveness and discrimination. However, hate is not an opinion. Freedom does not entail being anti-foreign.
Thus, given its roots of anti-establishment, FILMFEST DRESDEN could never NOT be political. Throughout the years, it has showcased films that make us question the Europe we live in and urge us to take action.
The first film of the programme, Gloria Victoria exposes the struggles of the 20th century and attempts to understand the root of today’s problems, while L’Escale confronts us with the reality of absurd border controls. In Import, a Bosnian family’s 1990s arrival in the Netherlands serves as a metaphor for what it means to start over somewhere new. If the Ukrainian short Kohannia explores the limbo state in a hopeless country, the Danish animation How long, not long calls for action before it’s too late, inspired by the famous speech of Martin Luther King. This action is apparent in Riot, a powerful piece on police violence in modern-day France countered by the community’s resistance. On a similar note, JUCK shows us the communal power of the pussy to crash the system.
Time to take back control!
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Anne Geschütz
Gloria Victoria
Theodore Ushev, Canada, animated, 2013, 7'
The Stopover
Collectif Faire-part, Congo, Belgium, Germany, experimental, documentary, 2022, 15'
Import
Ena Sendijarević, The Netherlands, fiction, 2016, 17'
Deep Love
Mykyta Lyskov, Ukraine, animated, 2019, 14'
How long, not long
Michelle Kranot, Uri Kranot, Denmark, animated, 2016, 6'
Riot
Frank Ternier, France, animated, 2017, 13'
Juck
Olivia Kastebring, Julia Gumpert, Ulrika Bandeira, Sweden, documentary, 2018, 17'