For the 26th time, FILMFEST MÜNCHEN, Germany's premiere summer film festival, will be attracting movie lovers, filmmakers and industry professionals from around the world.

CINEMERIT AWARD Julie Christie
The 2008 CineMerit Award, for extraordinary contributions to motion pictures as an art form, goes to the legendary British actress Julie Christie, who has played in over 40 films. She helped make movie history in such classics as DARLING, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, FAHRENHEIT 451 and SHAMPOO, to name just a few. The Academy Award winner is still, after more than forty years in the business, a much sought- after actress. In the past several years, she has appeared in blockbusters such as TROY or HARRY POTTER as well as in less mainstream films like THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS or most recently, AWAY FROM HER, which garnered her an Oscar nomination. Speaker at the gala ceremony on June 27 will be director Hal Hartley who worked with Christie on NO SUCH THING.

Herbert Achternbusch Retrospective
This year’s retrospective is dedicated to Munich filmmaker, author and artist Herbert Achternbusch. We will be screening all 28 of his films in honor of his 70th birthday. Festival director Andreas Ströhl: Achternbusch’s humor begins where other people’s stops. If you can look at his films without any categorical expectations, it becomes obvious how simple, clear and light they are. A serene melancholy fills them, a certain willingness to suffer as well as relief in the face of desperation. Achternbusch put it like this: “I shit my films into the snow, one after the other. You can follow me by my trail of piles. The last pile is me.”

Special Event with Alexander Kluge
After the great success of last year’s special event in honor of his 75th birthday, filmmaker Alexander Kluge will be our guest again this year and will screen and talk about film footage never seen before.

New Prize at Filmfest München
ARRI and Carl Zeiss AG are presenting a new prize that will be awarded at Filmfest München starting in 2008. The Arri-Zeiss Award (€ 50,000) will go to the best foreign film and will be decided on by an independent jury.

The roughly 200 films we’ll be screening in 2008 will be clearly arranged in our traditional sections:

International Program, New German Cinema, Silent Movie, German TV Movies, Open Air, Nouveau Cinéma Français, American Independents, Kinderfilmfest, Visionas Latinas, and The Year of the Dragon – Young Cinema from China


The theme of this year's Open Air screenings on the terrace of the Gasteig festival center is: Viva Las Vegas!
Among others, we’ll be showing Terry Gilliam’s remarkable trip, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS with Johnny Depp, and the wonderfully anarchic MARS ATTACKS! by Tim Burton.

Filmfest's Movie Mile runs from the RIO Filmpalast past Gasteig (the festival center), the Forum-Kinos, the MaxX Cineplex all the way to Munich's Filmmuseum.
The Press Center (with computer work stations) is located in the Glass Hall on the upper level of the Gasteig festival center (Rosenheimerstr. 5).

The program is featured on the website (www.filmfest-muenchen.de). Starting