This year FilmFestival Cottbus - Festival of East European Cinema celebrates a special anniversary: 20 years, a time during which the festival did not only expand its programme, but also improved its image to the point of being known as the world's most renowned film festival of East European cinema today. This year's festival motive combines traditional patterns from flags and crests into a new modern design.

Cottbus at the Berlinale

With the traditional East European Brunch, FilmFestival Cottbus and Connecting Cottbus presented themselves at the embassy of the state of Brandenburg on occasion of the 60th Berlinale. With about 300 guests this reception has developed into a popular industry meeting during the years, where sponsors and supporters of the festival as well as film makers from East and West meet and discuss new projects. At the reception, four prizes have been awarded. The distribution support prize for a festival film "From Cottbus to Cinema" was given to Alpha Medienkontor. The Weimar-based distributor received the prize sponsored by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH as well as Film und Video Untertitelung Gerhard Lehmann AG Potsdam-Babelsberg. It is meant to support the theatrical release of the feature film THE RAINBOWMAKER (Germany, Russia, Netherlands, Finland 2008) by Georgian director Nana Djordjadze. Her fairytale about a weather forecaster who fights for the love of his family by influencing the weather was successfully screened at the Cottbus closing ceremony 2009. Bernhard Sallmann's Science-Fiction documentary DREAMS OF THE LAUSITZ (Germany 2009) received the Promotion Prize of the DEFA Foundation. At the 19th FilmFestival Cottbus, with an audience largely coming from the region described in the film, DREAMS OF THE LAUSITZ met very interested visitors.

Being the main prize winner of the festival, ORDINARY PEOPLE director Vladimir Perisic from Serbia also received the CoCo special pitch award of the East-West co-production market Connecting Cottbus. He now has the possibility to present his newest project at the upcoming Connecting Cottbus. The first award of the 20th FilmFestival Cottbus goes to Russian film student Anastasia Posnova: The Promotion Prize of the GWFF.  Already before the reception, the German-Russian Film Academy's promotional society met to discuss the objectives for 2010. In the afternoon, the festival team and Connecting Cottbus invited into the Cottbus Lounge at the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin.

Festival on tour

The Berlinale was not the only festival Cottbus paid special attention to. Already in January a presentation of the award-winning film FOXES (Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Ireland 2009) took place at the Max Ophüls Preis in Saarbrücken, Germany. At filmPOLSKA in Berlin, Cottbus presented its award-winner and blockbuster MALL GIRLS (Poland 2009). Other research trips led film scouts already to the festivals in Tallinn, Trieste, Budapest and Sofia. During the following weeks, the festival curators will preselect films among others in Plzen, Oberhausen, Cannes, Kiev, Cluj, Gdynia, Moscow, Karlovy Vary, Pula, Wrocław and Sarajevo.

Film Starts in Germany

In Germany, a number of Cottbus festival films from the previous edition have been released into theatres. Since January 28th, UNIVERSALOVE (Austria, Luxembourg, Serbia 2008) and THE LAST STATION (Germany, Russia 2009) are in German cinemas. Romantics get their money's worth with THE RAINBOWMAKER (Germany, Russia, Netherlands, Finland 2008) in theatres since February 25th. In PINK TAXI (Germany 2009), released March 4th, viewers can listen to the most amusing women-to-women-talk since the Perestrojka. The theatrical release for LOW LIGHTS (Lithuania, Germany 2009) has been changed two times and now is scheduled to take place on April 29th. On May 6th, the Science-Fiction documentary DREAMS OF THE LAUSITZ (Germany 2009) will come to selected theatres in Germany, as well as the coproduction AUTUMN (Turkey, Germany 2008) on May 13th.

Up to date

You can find all about film starts, awards, festival news and research trips on our internet sites. Please look at our homepage http://www.filmfestivalcottbus.de/, join FilmFestival Cottbus on Facebook, or follow KlappeDesOstens on Twitter. But above all, you can already mark November 2nd-7th, 2010 in your calender, when we again most cordially invite you to come to Cottbus.