On Wednesday, 13 February 2008, the FilmFestival Cottbus offers its annual presentation at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival. Venue is the Federal Office of the State of Brandenburg in the German capital city.

The East European Brunch is a now traditional Berlinale meeting-point for representatives of the film and media branches in East and West, and is an ideal opportunity for Cottbus Festival Director Roland Rust to outline the focal themes of the 2008 FilmFestival Cottbus later this year. The 18th FilmFestival Cottbus - Festival of East European Cinema is scheduled to run from 11 to 16 November 2008. The annual festival expertly surveys the current state of filmmaking throughout Central and Eastern Europe, and supplements its competitions for feature films and short films with a Focus section that annually presents a selected region in a broader context. Under the title "New Cinema from the Baltics", the 18th Cottbus Festival concentrates on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, at the same time highlighting their relations with other countries on the Baltic Sea. As Festival Director Roland Rust emphasizes, "The fact that the Baltic region is considered to possess the highest growth potential within the European Union is reflected by its disproportionately large volume of film productions of outstanding artistic quality. Until now, this phenomenon has not received the attention it deserves abroad - a situation Cottbus intends to remedy in the year in which all three Baltic states celebrate the 90th anniversary of their proclamations of independence."

The East European Brunch also provides the festive setting within which the DEFA Foundation awards its Promotional Prize to a film selected in the course of the 17th FilmFestival Cottbus. Foundation chairman Helmut Morsbach will present the award, which is worth 4,000 euros, to the young writer-director Marc Meyer. His FAMILY RULES! met with an enthusiastic audience response when screened at the close of the festival in November 2007, and has since enjoyed considerable success on general release in Germany.

The DEFA Foundation award honours Marc Meyer's dark and melancholic comedy about a lonely man and his highly idiosyncratic search for a family of his own as an "unusual parable on modern society's with its lacking cohesion and people's reluctance to make commitments."

The East European Brunch likewise offers a foretaste of Connecting Cottbus. In 2008, this East West co-production market celebrates its 10th jubilee. Artistic director Gabriele Brunnenmeyer will speak at the reception and disclose further highlights of the forum, which takes place on 13 and 14 November 2008 in the framework of the 18th FilmFestival Cottbus.

The established industry forum Connecting Cottbus annually presents 13 film projects selected on the basis of their East-West co-production potential. In line with the Focus of the 2008 festival, the 2008 Connecting Cottbus will centre on the Baltics. As a pitching market, Connecting Cottbus has already initiated a number of successful film ventures, among them Srdan Golubovic's prizewinning THE TRAP. This year once again, the Viennese distributor EastWest Filmdistribution will present its "Best Pitch Award" for excellence in script doctoring.

Thanks to the "CoCo Special Pitch Award", Connecting Cottbus 2008 offers a fresh encounter with one of the main prizewinners from the 17th FilmFestival Cottbus. Together with her producer Rossitsa Valkanova, director Iglika Trifonova (INVESTIGATION) will present a new project to the pitching market. All other producers are invited to submit current projects for consideration before 25 July 2008.
Further information is available at http://www.connecting-cottbus.de/