With fantastic musical accompaniment by Beate Wein and Aaron Christ, we kicked off our festival week to a sold-out house.

Gabriele Canu from SADPARA, Betina Kuntzsch from HIMMEL WIE SEIDE. VOLLER ORANGEN, and Ilona Vashkelite and Pavel Medvedev from THE VISIONARY FROM ARTYUSHKINO presented their work in person and engaged in lively conversation.

The evening culminated in the "Nacht des Bauernfilms" (Night of the Farm Film) with Antje Schiffers and Thomas Sprenger, who were our guests for the third time.

Photos: Torsten Stapel

We were delighted to see a full house at the youth film afternoon, where we mainly presented a selection from our FILMKNACK project: the young people brought their parents, friends, and teachers with them and were thrilled by the warm applause for their films.

In the subsequent competition block, guests presented their films: Peter and Nevelin Vulchev had come from Bulgaria for the short feature film UND DAS WAR'S FÜR DIESE WEIHNACHTEN (And That Was It for This Christmas), Jeroen Ceulebrouck and Elise Leonard from Belgium presented their animation DER RABE (The Raven), and Christian Goretzky presented the German animation MAMA MICRA.

To round off the event, we showed the feature film HANAMI by Denise Fernandes. Beate Wein and Nicolas Schulze provided musical accompaniment throughout the day.

Pictures: Torsten Stapel