Four feature debuts from the Forum Programme have been nominated for the 50 000 Euro first feature award: CHILLA (40 DAYS OF SILENCE) by Saodat Ismailova, ICH WILL MICH NICHT KÜNSTLICH AUFREGEN (ASTA UPSET) by Max Linz, LOS ÁNGELES by Damian John Harper and SHE’S LOST CONTROL by Anja Marquardt. The number of films in competition for this prize has been reduced this year for the first time. 18 films in total have been selected from Competition, Panorama, Forum, Generation and Perspektive Deutsches Kino by the section heads.

Once again the Forum will be showing a series of special screenings dedicated to historical films and re-discoveries as well as current works of special formal and thematic interest.

When Bong Joon-ho first opened Jean-Marc Rochette’s comic “Snowpiercer” in a Seoul bookshop, he supposedly devoured all three volumes on the spot. Eight years later, the French comic has been made into the most lavish Korean film of all time. SEOLGUK-YEOLCHA (SNOWPIERCER) describes an impending ice age caused by human hand, whose last survivors are left circling the earth in a non-stop express train. The rich are in the front carriages and the poor ­– from whose perspective the story is told – at the back. Producer Park Chan-wook, director Bong Joon-ho, actors Song Kang-ho, Ko Asung, John Hurt and Tilda Swinton and comic author Jean-Marc Rochette will all be on hand at the Forum screening.