Two alum­ni of our SERIAL EYES pro­gramme have been fea­tured in an arti­cle on the renowned indus­try web­site SCREEN DAILY (a branch of the British SCREEN INTERNATIONAL). Judit Ban­hazi from Hun­gary and Ivan Kneže­vić from Ser­bia are two of the five up-and-com­ing tal­ent­ed screen­writ­ers from South­east Europe.

“Germany’s lead­ing film and TV school, Berlin DFFB, offers Ser­i­al Eyes, a post­grad­u­ate train­ing pro­gramme for tele­vi­sion writ­ers and pro­duc­ers that is wide­ly regard­ed as the most use­ful such plat­form in Europe.”

Ben­jamin Har­ris, head of pro­gramme for SERIAL EYES, explains the unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of these South­east Euro­pean authors:

“We’ve been very lucky to have had great young tal­ents from the [South­east Europe] region in almost every train­ing cycle. There are dif­fer­ent sen­si­bil­i­ties from these writ­ers than what we are used to from West­ern Euro­pean writ­ers. For exam­ple, even though many of our writ­ers are too young to have expe­ri­enced Com­mu­nism per se, they were often there for the upheavals and immense change that were the 1990s, or are now expe­ri­enc­ing the after­math of those tran­si­tion­al years.”

“In the writ­ing there is often an open­ness for change and tran­si­tion, but with a cer­tain play­ful­ness,” he con­tin­ues. “The writ­ers are more will­ing to explore new things, new ideas, and even old issues with a new set of eyes. The sto­ries show an aware­ness of the seri­ous­ness of the social real­i­ties of their own cul­tures – crime, polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion, social inequal­i­ty – but these themes are often dealt with in unex­pect­ed ways. There is less inhi­bi­tion to mix gen­res and tones and stark, gris­ly dra­ma exists side by side with almost absur­dist com­e­dy.”

The arti­cle can be read in its entire­ty here.

The 20th First First Steps Awards will be pre­sent­ed on Sep­tem­ber 9, 2019, and the DFFB is delight­ed to have five nom­i­na­tions for these cov­et­ed awards:

Direc­tor Susanne Hein­rich’s fea­ture film DAS MELANCHOLISCHE MÄDCHEN has been nom­i­nat­ed for the best fea­ture-length film, which comes with a €25,000 prize.

Direc­tor Lothar Her­zog’s fea­ture film 1986 has also been nom­i­nat­ed in the same cat­e­go­ry.

Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Agnesh Pakoz­di is nom­i­nat­ed for the MICHAEL BALLHAUS PRIZE, which comes with a €10,000 prize, for her work on DAS MELANCHOLISCHE MÄDCHEN.

Pro­duc­er Romana Janik is nom­i­nat­ed for the NO FEAR AWARD, which comes with a €10,000 prize, for her work on the film 1986.

And final­ly, Jacob Haupt­mann’s screen­play ZEIT DER MONSTER is nom­i­nat­ed for the FIRST STEPS SCREENPLAY PRIZE, which comes with a €10,000 prize.

About the films/​screenplay

DAS MELANCHOLISCHE MÄDCHEN

A girl roams through the city look­ing for a place to sleep. Along the way she meets young moth­ers who cel­e­brate moth­er­hood reli­gious­ly, goes home with an absti­nent exis­ten­tial­ist for whom sex is “just anoth­er mar­ket”, and waits for the end of cap­i­tal­ism in a drag bar. Her attempt to write a book doesn’t make it beyond the first sen­tence of the sec­ond chap­ter, and she finds no space between art gal­leries, yoga stu­dios, and the beds of strangers. Instead of try­ing to fit in, she starts per­ceiv­ing her depres­sion as a polit­i­cal issue. Through 15 of the girl’s humor­ous encoun­ters, DAS MELANCHOLISCHE MÄDCHEN, explores our post-mod­ern soci­ety between pre­car­i­ty and self-mar­ket­ing, ser­i­al monogamy and neo-spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, dis­il­lu­sion­ment and the pres­sure to be hap­py. Susanne Heinrich’s debut film brings togeth­er pop and the­o­ry, fem­i­nism and humour, and gives you tons of quotes you’ll want to see on adver­tis­ing bill­boards in neon let­ters.

1986

Ele­na is a stu­dent in Min­sk, Belarus. She has a pas­sion­ate but increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with her boyfriend Vic­tor. When her father is sud­den­ly arrest­ed, she has to con­tin­ue his ille­gal busi­ness­es. In order to make deals for him, she must repeat­ed­ly dri­ve into the ‘for­bid­den zone’ of Tch­er­nobyl. She is fas­ci­nat­ed by the zone’s decep­tive beauty—but soon her life seems con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by a destruc­tive force…

ZEIT DER MONSTER

It’s the sum­mer of 1914, just before the begin­ning of the First World War. Elsa (19), a nurse with a strict Calvin­ist upbring­ing, takes a posi­tion in a remote hos­pi­tal ward in the Ger­man colony of Cameroon. While the lead­ing physi­cian Alexan­der (37), with Elsa’s help, rig­or­ous­ly pur­sues his research to cre­ate a drug against nar­colep­sy, his wife Lydia (28) strug­gles to find mean­ing in her life. When Elsa dis­cov­ers sev­er­al poi­soned ani­mals in the infir­mary, the com­man­der of the near­est police force begins to inves­ti­gate the case with bru­tal meth­ods. The irrup­tion of vio­lence caus­es the already frag­ile struc­ture of the infir­mary to col­lapse and brings repressed desires to the sur­face, which plunges Elsa’s ordered world view into chaos.

The grad­u­a­tion film DIE EINZELTEILE DER LIEBE (direct­ed and writ­ten by Miri­am Bliese, cin­e­matog­ra­phy by Markus Koob, and pro­duced by Clemens Köstlin) will be released in Ger­man cin­e­mas on 22 August with the help of Arse­nal Filmver­leih!

The film, which cel­e­brat­ed its world pre­miere at this year’s Berli­nale, will be screened in the fol­low­ing cin­e­mas:

BERLIN: City Kino Wed­ding, fsk-Kino, Kino in der Brot­fab­rik, Wolf Kino, Soho House

MAGDEBURG: Moritzhof

AACHEN: Apol­lo

MÜNSTER: Cin­e­ma

FREIBURG: Har­monie

HEILBRONN: Kinos­tar Arthaus

HAMBURG: Aba­ton

HANNOVER: Kino im Kün­stler­haus

DRESDEN: Kino im Dach

LEIPZIG: Pas­sage Kinos

NÜRNBERG: Casablan­ca

SEEFELD: Kino Bre­it­wand

STUTTGART: Del­phi

TÜBINGEN: Ate­lier

We are pleased to announce that Gre­gor Bozic‘s grad­u­a­tion film STORIES FROM THE CHESTNUT WOODS will cel­e­brate its world pre­miere at the renowned Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val (TIFF) in the Dis­cov­ery sec­tion.

The film is a fairy­tale that takes place in the post-war peri­od on the Yugosla­vian-Ital­ian bor­der and explores the themes of new begin­nings and tran­sience.

STORIES FROM THE CHESTNUT WOODS is a Sloven­ian-Ital­ian-Ger­man co-pro­duc­tion by Nosoro­gi, Trans­me­dia Pro­duc­tion, RTV Slove­nia, and the DFFB.