German Short Film Prize

Since Janis stopped leaving her bedroom, she observes her surroundings through the lens of a surveillance camera. Florian Riegal’s documentary HOLDING STILL describes a whole cosmos in the smallest of spaces and is one of the winners of the German Short Film Prize, which will shown together with the other nominees with numerous guests in attendance to mark the end of this year's cinema tour. The spectrum of films in the program encompasses all genres whilst also taking in the “mid-length” film (in the form of JESSI by Marie Josephin Schneider) which otherwise tends to fall through the gaps. The diverting nature of the short form and its ability to act like a magnifying glass to focus on an entire world are borne out by UNDERGROUND ODYSSEY, in which the Iliad and the Odyssey are both covered within six minutes, Andreas Hykade's LOVE & THEFT, which takes a furious ride through the history of animated film, and the short feature NACH DEN JAHREN by Josephine Links, which only needs a few sequences to describe how a family reconnects at the moment of farewell. (November 1). (Cornelia Klauß)