International Feature Film Competition for Women Directors

International Feature Film Competition for Women Directors

With 69 feature films from almost 40 different countries, the number of entries for our International Feature Film Competition for Women Directors rose once again. A sure sign of the growing popularity and reputation of this €25,000 award which, aimed solely at women film directors, is unique in Germany. This year‘s shortlist also gives an important overview of the wide and varied creativity of women film directors from all over the world. The festival is pleased to present the work of directors who, having made an acclaimed debut, now have to meet the pressure of expectations and bring off an interesting follow-up! However, we are also pleased to present the work of women film-makers who have succeeded over the years in building up a consistent and sophisticated oeuvre on a fiercely competitive market.

Eight films on one shortlist cannot hope to be representative. But with two films from France on the list – Stella and Les bureaux de Dieu (God‘s Offices) – this is a good indication of how strong and productive French women film directors are in any international comparison. A situation that can be ascribed to the still exceptional film promotion system in France. Two of the items – Liu lang shen gao ren (God Man Dog) from Taiwan and Niu lang zhi nu (Knitting) from China – may be seen as proxy for the abundance of formally, aesthetically and thematically interesting and innovative works from Asia which have been screened over recent years at our festivals and sometimes in cinemas as well. They narrate, albeit in different ways, of how their protagonists falteringly try to find their feet in the megacities of a globalised world.

Léa Pool‘s new film Maman est chez le Coiffeur (Mommy Is at the Hairdresser‘s) is a visually stunning tragicomic depiction of a summer that can only seem so infinitely long and shimmering from the perspective of childhood. It serves its Canadian director as a prism through which, with consummate ease, she can tell of homosexuality, emancipation and portents of the 1968 upheavals. Similarly spot-on is the work of Sylvie Verheyde whose Stella evokes her own childhood in the weird and wild 1970s and, at the same time, raises questions about social class affiliation and educational opportunity.

The main characters in Kelly Reichardt‘s Wendy and Lucy (USA) and Michaela Pavlátová‘s Děti Noci (Night Owls) (Czech Republic) are older. But things are not much better for these young women either. Ms Reichardt abandons Wendy still desperately seeking a livelihood in the middle of nowhere and delivers a laconic reflection on the American Dream. For her part, Ms Pavlátová – who presented her first short films
in Dortmund some years ago – narrates of the remarkable lethargy her protagonist Ofka goes through before attaining adulthood. This refusal to take decisions and/or to sustain them is also one of the topics touched on in Maren Ade‘s Alle Anderen (Everyone Else), a chamber play about love and gender roles produced here with wonderful actors.

_Stefanie Görtz