The section Night Sight curated by Markus Keuschnigg is dedicated to fantastic film. The diversity and originality of European genre film guarantees mind-blowing cinema experiences.
Essay
We Need to Talk about Movies!
Markus Keuschnigg, curator
With our souls worn down from the omnipresent crisis doom of recent years, it takes not least cinema to bring us back in sync with others and ourselves. But the search goes not for harmony, which in any case is not to be found in this year’s Night Sight films. Too pointed are the auteurs’ designs for their fantastic worlds to allow for conciliatory gestures to happen. It is much more likely that they wrest thoughts and emotions from us that make us question our identities and stances, attitudes and opinions, widening and expanding them, sometimes as far as transcendence. Here are this year’s conversation starters: The hypertoxic relationship between an uber-mother and her cancer-ridden son is compared to the dependence of North Koreans on their dictatorial regime. A young woman indulges in nature mysticism in her home village, destabilizing the patriarchal power structures as a result. An (almost) mute Finnish deserter slays dozens of Nazis in the boondocks of Lapland. An apartment block becomes a no-escape twilight zone and sociological petri dish. And in order to come into power, an aspiring medieval regent has to put his trust in a pagan woman. May this year’s Night Sight, besides rich cinematic experiences, also provide you with fodder for disputations and debates, so that we can embrace in consent, so that we can explode in dissent.
