Over the past two years, Albert Wiederspiel has preferred to only go into the hall during the Hamburg Film Festival after the lights have already gone out. The 62-year-old told the German Press Agency in Hamburg that he couldn’t stand the many empty seats. “It was all pretty unsatisfying. As the director of the film festival, I was very frustrated. I hated that.”
That’s why he’s all the more pleased that the film festival can probably be celebrated this year without corona-related restrictions. “We are planning with full cinemas and want to finally bring the word festival from our title back to bear. That had been neglected in the end.”
As usual, around 100 selected films will be shown in the seven festival cinemas with their eleven halls. About 280 performances are planned, including film festival around the corner special screenings in the district cinemas. Not all the works that may flicker across the screen have yet been determined. All strips will be at least German premieres. The opening film “We are then probably the relatives” by Hans-Christian Schmid about the kidnapping of the publicist Jan Philipp Reemtsma from his son’s point of view even starts as a world premiere in Hamburg. The film festival runs from September 29th to October 8th.
“So far, about 60 to 70 percent of the festival program is complete. The rest will be done in the next few weeks,” said Wiederspiel. In the end, he and his team will have viewed 700 to 900 titles. “In peak times we have to watch three to four films a day. We have a lot of oysters and a few pearls.” It also happens that he turns off some films after 20 minutes. “Life is too short for bad movies.”
The program will again include winning films from the film festivals in Cannes, Locarno, Venice and Copenhagen, Wiederspiel promises. Many of the Filmfest films – around 70 to 80 percent – ??only run here and not later in German cinemas.
Corona does not play a role in the selected films. “We deliberately don’t touch the subject.” Many filmmakers probably assumed that the audience would no longer want to deal with it. “And they are right.” The topic of the Ukraine war is also not an issue – but for completely different reasons. “It’s still too early for that this year. A film takes at least a year to develop.”
As always, the Hamburg Film Festival dares the quite wide balancing act between extreme art house films and broad entertainment films. “We want to depict the international cinema landscape as multifaceted as possible and also show the wealth of world cinema.” And that also requires the so-called blockbusters to attract visitors. “They’re our engine, so to speak, so that we can get attention and give the smaller, more difficult films a push. That is also our job.”
By this, replay means, for example, films from Morocco, Nicaragua, Egypt and Paraguay. There will probably be no films from Russia in 2022. “We’re not boycotting Russian culture,” the festival director immediately clarified. “But there aren’t any suitable films yet.”
For Wiederspiel, the 30th edition of the film festival will be the penultimate one. 2023 is the end. The film expert curated the Hamburg festival for the first time in 2003. Since then, it has been three days longer, much more centered in the city, larger overall and more multi-faceted in terms of content.