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The Best Student Films at the 2006 Munich Filmschoolfest

From November 19 - 25, the Munich International Festival of Film Schools will be a forum for film students from around the world for the 26th time. It has long been the most important student festival of its kind, in which the public can get a glimpse of the cinema of the future and check out the latest worldwide trends.

In Munich's Film Museum, we will be screening 65 theatrical shorts, animation films and documentaries from 42 film schools in 23 countries. 326 films from 76 schools in 39 countries were submitted – a new record. Of these, an independent committee (producer Karlo Funk from Estonia, animation artist Till Novak from Mainz and film journalist Susanne Herrmanski from Munich) selected the 45 shorts, 14 animated films and 6 documentaries which will compete for prizes worth a total of € 50,000.

The students will be presenting their films in Munich personally - for the young filmmakers a unique opportunity to meet each other and network. For Munich audiences, it's the chance to discover tomorrow's top directors. Cannes winners such as Lars von Trier or Thomas Vinterberg were total unknowns when they screened their early films in Munich. So were later Oscar-winners like Nick Park (WALLACE & GROMIT), Caroline Link (NOWHERE IN AFRICA), Jan Sverak (KOLYA) or Florian Gallenberger (QUIERO SER). Not to mention all the leading German directors from Sönke Wortmann to Rainer Kaufmann to Detlev Buck who all faced their first large audiences at the Munich festival.