When the 24th European Film Awards return to Berlin on 3 December, there will be an impressive line-up of European filmmakers presenting the individual awards, among them EFA Ambassadors Maria de Medeiros (Portugal), Moritz Bleibtreu (Germany) and Maciej Stuhr (Poland). They will be joined by German actresses Karoline Herfurth, Nina Hoss,  Sibel Kekilli, Alexandra Maria Lara and Heike Makatsch and their colleagues Zrinka Cvitesic (Croatia), Irène Jacob (Switzerland), Ludivine Sagnier and Syl...

  37,000 visitors were on hand at DOK Leipzig this year - a new record. The 54th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film proved yet again to be an audience magnet - the attendance numbers have now risen for seven consecutive years. "The quality of this year's programme was extremely high, the cinemas were full and the industry events were very productive. We tried out innovative event formats and successfully introduced the new DOK Training platform. Industry p...

Various new records are being announced by the organizers of the 54th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, which is now coming to a conclusion. The record attendance is particularly impressive. At least 38,000 viewers will have watched films at DOK Leipzig before the week-long festival comes to a close. Many screenings were sold out, including several in the largest festival cinema, which can accommodate more than 700 viewers. The growth trend in attendance thus also...

The Retrospective of the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival has rediscovered a legendary German-Russian film studio: Mezhrabpom-Film and its German branch Prometheus wrote film history from 1922 to 1936.Moisei Aleinikov, a Russian film expert and producer from tsarist times who had a great instinct for the right topics, and Willi Münzenberg, a German communist and “red media entrepreneur”, joined forces in 1922 to combine clever business ideas, a political mission and boundless enthusi...

Mark your calendars! One of SEE FEST’s most important partners is screening new films from Germany and we want you to come!   From October 26 - 30, 2011, the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles presents the 5th annual German Currents Film Festival, showcasing the best of new German cinema. Screenings will be held at the Egyptian Theatre, the Aero Theatre and the Goethe-Institut L.A.   Opening night, Wed. Oct 26 at 7:30pm, don’t miss “Almanya”, directed by Jas...

The 54th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film began this Monday with a festive opening. In the sold-out CineStar movie theater State Minister of Culture Bernd Neumann, Saxon’s State Minister of Culture Prof. Sabine Schorlemer and festival director Claas Danielsen welcomed 750 guests from all over the world and made clear media-related and political demands in their speeches. From the very beginning Bernd Neumann emphasized the importance of the genre. “Documentar...

More good news for the South East European film community! CINEMA KOMUNISTO, a documentary about the Yugoslav movie industry, has just won the 2011 Gold Hugo Award for Best Documentary at Chicago International Film Festival. The doc's tagline is " When reality has a different script from the one in your films, who wouldn't invent a country to fool themselves?"  Mila Turajlić, the film’s director, had the honor of having her first feature doc in the internationa...

     FIVE DEBUT FILMS NOMINATED FOR EFA DISCOVERY AWARD The European Film Academy has announced the nominations for the EUROPEAN DISCOVERY 2011 - Prix FIPRESCI, an award presented annually as part of the European Film Awards to a young and upcoming director for a first full-length feature film. This year’s nominations were determined by a committee comprised of observer Yves Marmion (EFA Chairman, France), Board Members Els Vandevorst (the Netherlands) and Cedomir Ko...

Opening with true love – The Icelandic romantic comedy OKKAR EIGIN OSLÓ (Our Own Oslo) by Reynir Lyngdal will start off the 60th International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg The great anniversary edition of the International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg, which is now 60 years old, starts cheerfully and amourously: the romantic comedy OKKAR EIGIN OSLÓ (Our Own Oslo) by newcomer director Reynir Lyngdal marks the official start of the programme of the second-oldest German film festival....

With this year's final nomination having just been announced at the International Short Film Festival in Drama (Greece), the list of the nominated short films is now complete. The short film initiative is organised by the European Film Academy in co-operation with a series of film festivals throughout Europe. At each of these festivals, an independent jury presents one of the European short films in competition with a nomination in the short film category of the European Film Award...

The European Film Academy proudly announces the three nominations in the category EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY ANIMATED FEATURE FILM 2011.A committee consisting of EFA Board Members Per Holst (producer, Denmark) and Antonio Saura (producer, Spain) as well as representatives of CARTOON, the European Association of Animation Film, Patrick Caradec (France), Heikki Jokinen (Finland), and Thilo Rothkirch (Germany) decided to nominate the following films:LE CHAT DU RABBIN (The Rabbi’s Cat), France directed...

Telluride Film Festival (September 2-5, 2011), presented by the National Film Preserve, draws to a close today following a spectacular weekend of diverse programming, surprise screenings and special guests.   Telluride Film Festival screened twenty-eight new feature films in its main program, six film revivals selected by Guest Director Caetano Veloso, nine Backlot programs, nine classics and restorations, 30 shorts and student films, and hosted nine seminars and conversations between...

World Premiere: “No Sex is No Option” to Open the 18th Oldenburg International Film Festival The star-studded comedy has its world premiere at the debut of a new festival venue: for the first time ever, the Opening Gala will be held at Oldenburg’s EWE Arena. Hamburg based writer, Mia Morgowski, landed a surprise bestseller in 2008 with her book, “No sex is no option”, which now finds its way into German cinemas. Morgowski reveals the crucial mis...

  Every year, the EFA People’s Choice Award allows film fans across Europe to elect their favourite film. When the European Film Academy invites its members, Europe’s greatest film stars, directors, actors and actresses, to attend the European Film Awards, the People’s Choice Award sheds a spotlight on the people films are made for, the audience. This year’s vote has started – vote now and win the chance to join winners and nominees on the red carpet in Berlin! Winners in...

CANNESDanish director Lars von Trier apologised on Wednesday for remarking at the Cannes film festival that he sympathised "a little bit" with Adolf Hitler.    "If I have hurt someone this morning by the words I said at the press conference, I sincerely apologize," he said in an email sent to AFP by Meta Louise Foldager, a producer of his latest film "Melancholia".    "I am not anti-Semitic or racially prejudiced in any way, nor am I a Nazi." ...

Elfi Mikesch, born 1940 in Judenburg, Styria, but living in Berlin for many years, is one of the most multi-faceted artist personalities of today. Starting off as a painter and photographer, she slowly expanded her artistic profile by making a name for herself as an internationally sought after director and cinematographer. Already her first documentary Ich denke oft an Hawaii (I Often Think of Hawaii) was awarded the Silver Filmband in 1978. Beyond that, her cinematography unambiguously informe...

The weather this Berlinale has been more or less "as usual" -- chilly, around freezing every day, a few snowflakes in the air, and brightly overcast -- no sunshine, but bright cloudy days casting a bright silver haze on the cobblestone meadows of Potsdamer Platz -- the kind of bracing weather that makes one happy to be inside a warm cinema rather than out on a tempting beach ... like at Cannes, Venice, or San Sebastian. Berlinale veterans --which means anyone who was here before...

  At the 61st Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale, Germany, February 10-20, 2011) the Prize of the International Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) has been presented to:   "The Turin Horse" (A Torinói Ló) by Béla Tarr (Hungary, 2010) (International Competition)   "Top Floor Left Wing" (Dernier étage gauche gauche) by Angelo Cianci (France, Luxemburg, 2010) (Panorama)   "Heaven's Story" by Zeze Takahisa (Jap...