Save the Date!

In just over five months CROSSING EUROPE will start its 17th edition. From April 21 to 26, CROSSING EUROPE dedicates itself to the concept of presenting ambitious European film in an accessible manner and making a direct exchange with filmmakers possible. In the coming spring the European film continent will once again be the programmatic focus of Austria’s second largest international film festival.

After the highly successful festival edition 2019, with a record number of 24.000 spectators, a large number of films from that year’s edition were shown, or will be shown (soon), once more: just after the CROSSING EUROPE 2019 at follow-up screenings in May in Vienna, as well as during the summer at open air cinemas such as the Kaleidoskop, Kino wie noch nie, or dot.dot.dot, or as a regular cinema release (e.g. the opening film SYSTEM CRASHER, AREN’T YOU HAPPY?, GOD EXISTS, HER NAME IS PETRUNYA, the award winning films MOVEMENTS OF A HEARBY MOUNTAIN and HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME).

Additionally, last year’s winner of the audience award, IRINA, the opening film SYSTEM CRASHER, and the closing film GOD EXISTS, HER NAME IS PETRUNYA, as well as HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME, PUTIN’S WITNESSES, SIBEL, and SONS OF DENMARK have been nominated for prestigious European film prizes, such as the European University Film Award (EUFA), the European Discovery Award 2019 – Prix FIPRESCI, the LUX film prize, and the European Film Awards. Nora Fingscheit’s success SYSTEM CRASHER was not only a box office hit in Germany, but is also Germany’s nomination for the Academy Awards 2020 (Oscars).

Having taken strength from last year’s success, festival director Christine Dollhofer and her team are now jumping right into the intense phase of programming the festival. The plan is to present approx. 150 hand-picked feature films and documentaries from all over Europe – among which are countless world premieres, as well as internationally award winning films that will be shown in Austria for the first time. The first details on the program will be announced in December.

On a European level, CROSSING EUROPE is focusing on intensified collaboration on an artistic, programmatic, organizational, and technological level within the framework of the festival network MIOB moving images | open borders. At regular networking meetings with the six partner festivals in Cannes, Sarajevo, and currently in Seville, the next goals for establishing a Best-Practice-Model for European networking are will be developed. The goal is to profit in the long-term on a programmatic as well as on an organizational level from a European exchange of experiences.