At the East European Brunch at the 54th International Film Festival in Berlin, the newly-created glass sculpture “Lubina” has be presented (feb 12th) to the main prize winner from the 13th Film Festival Cottbus, Lidija Bobrova for her film “Babusja” (Granny). The prize, donated by the Gesellschaft zur Wahrnehmung von Film- und Fernsehrechten (GWFF, München) is endowed with 12,000 € and will be conferred by Ms. Gerti Müller-Ernstberger.

In 2004 the festival (Nov 2 -6) will again offer a competent survey of current feature film production in the eastern European countries and will be showing numerous film premieres. It will centre around the two competitions for feature films and short features. As the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel wrote on 10.11.2003, Cottbus has now “…established itself internationally as the most important festival for east European film”.

The FOCUS in 2004 is directed at Czech cinema and will be organised in cooperation with the Czech Film Center
.
In the year of EU accession, the film production of our neighbouring country is to be presented in a broader context. After the radical political changes of the “velvet revolution”, the Czech Republic was the country in eastern Europe with the most emphatic new beginning for the film world as a new generation of directors took over. The country can now point to a number of internationally acknowledged talents. The best-known representative of this generation is Jan Sverák, whose film “Kolya” won an Oscar, but films by a.o. Sasa Gedeon, Bohdan Slama and Petr Zelenka - all discoveries made by the Film Festival Cottbus - have also found their way into German cinemas.
The film selection for FOCUS will also be dominated by works by these young directors, whose unprecedented successes with domestic audiences represent an example to many eastern European filmmakers.

The specialist forum CONNECTING COTTBUS is to take place on 4th and 5th November 2004. The choice of themes for CONNECTING COTTBUS is once again oriented on the FOCUS of the Film Festival, the Czech Republic. As well
as cooperation with Slovakia, there has been successful collaboration with Austria and France for some time now, and so the programme of CONNECTING COTTBUS will also be devoted to coproduction opportunities with these
two countries.
The Russian film “Vozvrashchenie“ (The Return) received an award from the Ecumenical Jury at last year’s festival, and this has led to its selection for the European Templeton Film Prize presented at the Berlinale on 8th February. The film can be seen in German cinemas from 1st April 2004.