Filmfest Hamburg has lined up world premieres of films by Fatih Akin, Hans-Christian Schmid and Alrun Goette for its 30th anniversary edition, which runs from September 29 to October 8.
Golden Bear-winner Akin’s biopic of the German rapper and label boss Xatar, Rheingold, starring this year’s European Shooting Star Emilio Sakraya, will have its first screening on the director’s home turf in Hamburg.
Schmid’s adaptation of Johann Scheerer’s autobiographical novel We Are Next Of Kin, which chronicles the kidnapping of Scheerer’s literary scholar and political activist father Jan Philipp Reetsma, has been invited to open this year’s Filmfest.
Rheingold and We Are Next Of Kin will be released in German cinemas on October 27 and on November 3 respectively.
Sales on both films are being handled internationally by The Match Factory.
The Filmfest will also be presenting the world premiere of Aelrun Goette’s In A Country Doesn’t Exist Anymore based on her own autobiography and other true events experienced while growing up in the East Germany of the late 1980s.
The co-production between Ziegler Film, Tobis Film, Babelsberg Film and Gretchenfilm will be released by Tobis Film in German cinemas on October 6.
The Filmfest will also be the first opportunity to see director Reiner Holzemer’s documentary portrait of the German actor Lars Eidinger Lars Eidinger - Sein oder nicht sein, accompanying him, among other things, during the preparations for the production of Jedermann at the Salzburg Festival last year and while shooting the series Irma Vep by Olivier Assayas.
The Filmfest’s complete 2022 programme will not be unveiled until September 13, but festival director Albert Wiederspiel and his team have already announced several films having their German premieres in Hamburg.
They include two films world premiering at the Locarno Film Festival this week: Helena Wittmann’s second feature Human Flowers of Flesh and Kilian Riedhof’s French-language feature You Will Not Have My Hate based on Antoine Leiris’ bestseller about coping with life after his wife was killed in the Bataclan night club terrorist attack in Paris in 2015.
Also screening in Germany for the first time will be Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness, Tarik Saleh’s Boy From Heaven, Nataša Urban’s The Eclipse, Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO, Paz Encina’s EAMI, Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider, and Lise Aloka and Romane Gueret’s Les Pires.
In addition, Filmfest Hamburg will be playing host to the Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival for the presentation of its national competition of Ukrainian short and feature-length films.
It is expected that the Molodist festival organisers and Ukrainian filmmakers will travel to Hamburg to present their films in person from September 30 to October 5.
The international part of Molodist, including its competition section, is being planned to be held in Kyiv from October 14.
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