15th Filmfestival Münster 2013 will run from 9th to 13th October
From 9th to 13th October, the popular festival, organised by the Filmwerkstatt Münster, returns to the Cineplex, once again offering film buffs a wide variety of pure, unadulterated cinematic entertainment beyond the mainstream. This year’s handpicked selection of films have all been submitted by independent, budding filmmakers and are brimming with new discoveries, premieres and surprises.
It’s a measure of the wide assortment of films that the five-day programme includes 45 short fictional films, animations, and experimental and documentary films from Germany, Austria and Switzerland in the short film competition alone. The European Feature Film Competition includes eight submissions from young directors whose stories deal with the subject of “Time” in their images and in their aesthetic concepts. A jury will award a €5,000 prize to the best director.
The festival opens with the film “Die Erfindung der Liebe”, directed by Lola Randl and produced by Coin Film, Cologne, featuring Mario Adorf, Irm Hermann and Samuel Finzi. Lola Randl in fact made “Die Erfindung der Liebe” in 2011, before “Die Libelle und das Nashorn”. But then the leading actress Maria Kwiatkowsky died while the film was being shot, and filming had to be cancelled. Lola Randl has now managed to complete the project, reshooting scenes and creating a new film with old footage.
Debut director Tom Shoval’s entry looks to be promising. His debut film “Youth” (ISR/D 2012), which celebrated its premiere in the Panorama section of the Berlinale, tells the story of a kidnapping at the worst possible time with striking effect. Two brothers kidnap one of the younger brother’s classmates and demand a ransom from the girl’s indebted parents, but the victim’s orthodox family never answers the phone on the Sabbath. The inexperienced teenagers in Rambo t-shirts are clearly out of their league and the increasingly tense situation slowlygets out of hand – it all looked so much easier in their beloved Hollywood films.
The festival nights will also provide excitement for the most hardened fans of fantasy and horror films. The late-night block “Eerie & Sinister” offers a small but finely made selection of films with five excellent hair-raisers that take viewers on a journey into the abyss of human existence. The poetic Americanremake of “We Are What We Are”, whose eerily beautiful atmosphere is unparalleled across genres, will make its German premiere.
The school programme “Fit for the Silver Screen – Short Films for Teens”, which is thematically related to the central issue “Time”, will show short film blocks especially for school classes. A youth jury assisted by media education experts will judge and award the prize for the short film that turns the theme into a film best. There will also be an audience award.
Five days with more than a hundred carefully curated films are on the agenda in Münster, including a selection of documentaries on the subject of “Time”, the “Münster-Connection” section with films from the region, the filmLab EU symposium on “alternative filmmaking in Europe”, film talk in the festival lounge, the “Filmriss Party” and much more. The video and media art exhibition “ONE OF US CANNOT BE WRONG” is also opening at the Kunsthalle Münster on 4th October.
