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In the International Competition, 35 films from 27 countries, none of which has ever been shown in Bavaria, compete for the audience’s favour. The film with the most audience votes receives the “strasserauf Audience Award,” endowed with 1,000 euros and sponsored for the first time this year by green-electricity provider strasserauf. The festival is supported by the Cultural Foundation of Stadtsparkasse München, the Cultural Department of the City of Munich, and the companies Bavaria Film, Kodak, Philips, B2BTrip and NH Hoteles.
The films in this International Competition are presented in five programmes based on the five flavours:
The SWEET programme, with which the festival begins on Thursday at 7 p.m., features seven short films about love and joie de vivre. This motto is reflected, for example, in the romantic comedy HOW I MET YOUR FATHER. It is the story of how a couple met that they would never tell their children.
In LAS PELOTAS, two football-loving fathers take drastic steps to secure their families’ happiness. Unexpected joys and new friendships are discovered in ARIE when a loner’s canary passes away.
SOUR presents films that are both heavy and light, gloomy and hopeful, melancholy and wickedly bitter. The animation A FAMILY PORTRAIT, for example, tells of a family’s photography appointment that goes terribly wrong when secrets and jealousy begin to simmer. The black comedy CAN WE TALK? also tastes SOUR, as Vince gets more than he bargained for when he leaves his girlfriend yet again.
BITTER asks a great deal of the audience because the films in this programme series have no happy ending. The thematic spectrum ranges from the psychological examination of tragic heroes to the loss of confidence and faith in one’s own future – as in RITA or THE DESCENT, winner of the Silver Bear for short film at the Berlinale 2010.
The SALTY programme connects the salt on our skin. As in the rapidly developing romantic action comedy THE GODMOTHER: Rosella Wu is persuaded by her domineering mother to hire a professional killer to take care of Rosella’s husband Danny. The romantic thriller THE NEW TENANTS won an Oscar in 2010 and tells of two men who must cope with the worst day of their lives.
Finally, UMAMI brings together a less familiar but equally recognised flavour: the unknown, unfamiliar and extraordinary, which leaves a strong impression. Such as the experimental short A SMALL ANATOMY OF THE IMAGE, in which strange creatures are created from waxen bodies. Or the film STILL BIRDS, in which the viewer finds themselves in a world destroyed by an environmental catastrophe, where language is threatened with extinction.
All films in the International Competition have English subtitles.
The festival also shows the winning films of the German Short Film Award and, in the FRIENDS & FAMILY programme, works by members of the Munich Film Workshop and filmmaker friends.
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