Five feature debuts from the Forum programme are up for the 50 000 Euro first feature award: BEIRA-MAR (SEASHORE) by Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon, CHAIKI (THE GULLS) by Ella Manzheeva, DER GELDKOMPLEX (THE MONEY COMPLEX) by Juan Rodrigáñez, KOZA by Ivan Ostrochovský and NEFESIM KESILENE KADAR (UNTIL I LOSE MY BREATH) by Emine Emel Balcı.

Festival Director Dieter Kosslick and the heads of the Competition, Panorama, Forum, Generation, and Perspektive Deutsches Kino sections have nominated a total of 18 directorial debuts. The prize worth 50.000 Euro will be awarded by a jury consisting of directors Fernando Eimbcke (Mexico) and Joshua Oppenheimer (USA) as well as actress Olga Kurylenko (Ukraine).

The Forum completes its programme with a series of special screenings dedicated to historical films and re-discoveries as well as new films that grapple with cinema and film history.

Besides a couple of so-called B-Scheme films, which were shot for black audiences during the Apartheid era in South Africa, we are showing two films of the Arsenal Cinema’s "Asynchronous. Documentary and Experimental Films on the Holocaust" project, three films by Japanese director Kon Ichikawa from 1958-63, the Mexican film noir classic CUATRO CONTRA EL MUNDO (FOUR AGAINST THE WORLD), Leo Hurwitz’s STRANGE VICTORY from 1948, which has lost none of its topicality, as well as two films that explore the reception of film and film history and the passion for cinema: CINEMA: A PUBLIC AFFAIR by Tatiana Brandrup and WAS HEISST HIER ENDE? DER FILMKRITIKER MICHAEL ALTHEN (IS IT THE END THEN? THE FILM CRITIC MICHAEL ALTHEN) by Dominik Graf.