This year, the Hamburg Film Festival (Filmfest Hamburg) will welcome participants from the Ukrainian capital film festival for the first time. “We will be delighted to provide Kyiv’s Molodist International Film Festival with our Hamburg festival venues,” Albert Wiederspiel, film festival director, told dpa agency.

At the moment, only the Ukrainian part of the festival program is scheduled to be shown in Hamburg. Films by participants from other countries will be shown on the big screen in Kyiv in October. “We wish our Ukrainian colleagues good luck. This is a very difficult task in the current situation and we really hope that the political situation in the Ukrainian capital will normalize,” says Albert Wiedershpiel.

Ukrainian participants of the Molodist festival must come to Hamburg

Ukrainian short and feature films will be screened from September 30 to October 5 at the Alabama cinema, located on the territory of Hamburg’s cultural center “Kampnagel” (Kampnagel). The jury will determine the winner and present the prize. “We are going to show two or three films a day. Of course, interesting guests are also expected”, promised the festival director.

Festival organizers plan to have the directors of Ukrainian films participating in the competition come to Hamburg. At the same time, organizers warn that changes may be made to the program due to the war. The film festival director hopes that there will be enough sponsors to financially support the Molodist International Film Festival representatives.

According to Hamburg senator for culture and media, Carsten Brosda, Ukrainian filmmakers must have a platform so that they can show all the diversity and quality of Ukrainian culture. Russia’s attack on Ukraine is also an attack on freedom of culture and the arts, and participating in the Ukrainian film festival in Hamburg is a sign of artistic freedom and cultural exchange in Europe, says the senator.

This year, the Hamburg Film Festival is celebrating its 30th anniversary. This prestigious and well-known event in Germany is visited annually by up to 40 thousand people. The program is diverse – from cinematically complex art films to innovative mainstream cinema. Films by renowned directors such as Clint Eastwood and Michael Moore, Jim Jarmusch and Peter Greenway, Fatih Akin and Oliver Hirschbiege also participated in the festival. This year, participants and guests at the film festival from September 29 to October 8 will be able to watch around 100 films in six cinemas in Hamburg.