It’s movie time again. The film festival in Hamburg will show more than 110 films from almost 60 countries over ten days.
Hamburg – cinema halls are filling up again, prominent actors and directors walk across red carpets in front of Hamburg cinemas and internationally acclaimed films flicker across screens.
The 29th Hamburg Film Festival opened on Thursday evening in the presence of several hundred guests with the film “Große Freiheit” by Sebastian Meise.
After the Hamburg cultural summer, the start of the orchestra and theater season and the Reeperbahn Festival, the film festival is now also celebrating a big comeback and will hopefully become part of a great cultural frenzy, said Hamburg’s Senator for Culture Carsten Brosda (SPD) on Thursday evening. The “show traffic jam” of the past year has now been resolved. “And this is a festival that we should all give each other.”
The film festival is another big step for the restart of culture after the corona pandemic, “said Hamburg’s mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) on Thursday according to the announcement.
Senator for Culture Brosda also emphasized that the film festival also repeatedly draws the attention of many people like a spotlight to new productions – “including those that initially have a hard time on the market, but are important for cinema art and social understanding”. With the opening film “Great Freedom”, the film festival is also setting a social and political example. “Große Freiheit” is about the criminalization of homosexuals in post-war Germany. The film celebrated its world premiere in Cannes, where it also received a jury award.
Festival boss Albert Wiederspiel and his team selected numerous films for the program months ago, which have recently won over at international film festivals in Cannes, Locarno and Venice. These include the film adaptation of the book “Happening”, which was awarded the Golden Lion in Venice, and the Locarno winning film “Revenge is mine, everyone else pays cash”.
However, the film festival will not find its way back to its old size this year due to the corona. A capacity of 50 percent is possible in the cinemas – recovered, vaccinated and tested visitors are placed in a checkerboard pattern. In 2020 almost 14,000 visitors came, an occupancy rate of around a third.
All in all, cinema fans will be able to choose from 110 feature-length films from 57 countries in the five festival cinemas until October 9th. The Michel Children’s and Youth Film Festival also starts on Friday with the film “Willi and the miracle toad”. dpa
