YAAAS! Competition & School Screenings
02.03.2023 // In 2023, CROSSING EUROPE once again plans to actively fill a young audience with enthusiasm for cinema, offering an attractive holistic program of film education, acquisition of media literacy, and DIY video production for the fourth time in the form of the YAAAS! Youth Program. In the course of the festival, participants will have the opportunity to acquire new skills in workshops, engage with filmmakers, or present their own works on the big screen.
At the heart of the Youth Program is the YAAAS! Competition, one of CROSSING EUROPE’s four competition sections. It offers seven recent European feature films (Austrian premieres) selected by the YAAAS! Young Programmers (Anna Ahamer, Katrin Dobetsberger, Charlotte Fiedermutz, Laura Marceta, Lilia Obermüller, Raphael Trimmel), six students at the HBLA für künstlerische Gestaltung Linz. They have chosen a number of courageous, thematically diverse and artistically quite different films that mirror the life realities of European youths and young adults in all their complexity and, not least, present an impressive plea for a younger generation that scrutinizes and breaches the thinking patterns and social norms of yesterday. The festival prize CROSSING EUROPE Award – YAAAS! Youth Jury (€ 3000, powered by VdFS) is awarded among the six YAAAS! competition titles.
| Announcement of the first films from the YAAAS! Competition |
Registration for the YAAAS! School Screenings is open from March 9 via yaaas@crossingeurope.at. Details, film descriptions, trailers, and educational materials to prepare for and follow up on the festival visit can also be found on www.crossingeurope.at/yaaas from March 9. The other three titles of the YAAAS! Competition will be announced at the press conference on 13 April and online on crossingeurope.at on 14 April. All details about the YAAAS! Youth Program can be found on www.crossingeurope.at/yaaas
At the heart of the Youth Program is the YAAAS! Competition, one of CROSSING EUROPE’s four competition sections. It offers seven recent European feature films (Austrian premieres) selected by the YAAAS! Young Programmers (Anna Ahamer, Katrin Dobetsberger, Charlotte Fiedermutz, Laura Marceta, Lilia Obermüller, Raphael Trimmel), six students at the HBLA für künstlerische Gestaltung Linz. They have chosen a number of courageous, thematically diverse and artistically quite different films that mirror the life realities of European youths and young adults in all their complexity and, not least, present an impressive plea for a younger generation that scrutinizes and breaches the thinking patterns and social norms of yesterday. The festival prize CROSSING EUROPE Award – YAAAS! Youth Jury (€ 3000, powered by VdFS) is awarded among the six YAAAS! competition titles.
| Announcement of the first films from the YAAAS! Competition |
- 9-TAS ŽINGSNIS / THE 9TH STEP (LT 2022), directed by: Irma Pužauskaitė, 93 min, feature film, OV with English subtitles | Austrian premiere
Linas, a dry alcoholic, barely manages to keep his own life under control. But then his teenage daughter Eve, who finds refuge from her angst in her passion for music, moves in with him, bringing along her friend Maya, who projects her desire for a first big love story onto Linas. A powerful coming-of-age debut feature on the complex relationship of three people whose problems catch up with them.
- LE LYCÉEN / WINTER BOY / DER GYMNASIAST (FR 2022), directed by: Christophe Honoré, 122 min, feature film, OV with German subtitles | Austrian premiere | will also be shown as a school screening
Leave the French backcountry, and head off to Paris – that’s 17-year-old Lucas’s dream when his world is suddenly shattered by a tragic loss. Caught in a confusing range of emotions between grief and longing, he leaves behind his boyfriend and mother and accepts the invitation of his older brother Quentin, an artist living in the big city, to come and spend some time with him in Paris.
- METRONOM (RO/FR 2022), directed by: Alexandru Belc, 102 min, feature film, OV with English subtitles | Austrian premiere
Director Alexandru Belc’s initial idea of a documentary about young people in 1970s Romania turned into a fictional coming-of-age story in the era of neo-Stalinist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. 17-year-old Ana is in love, yearns for freedom, and listens to American rock music on the banned cult show “Metronom” on Radio Free Europe with her friends when her life suddenly takes a drastic turn.
Registration for the YAAAS! School Screenings is open from March 9 via yaaas@crossingeurope.at. Details, film descriptions, trailers, and educational materials to prepare for and follow up on the festival visit can also be found on www.crossingeurope.at/yaaas from March 9. The other three titles of the YAAAS! Competition will be announced at the press conference on 13 April and online on crossingeurope.at on 14 April. All details about the YAAAS! Youth Program can be found on www.crossingeurope.at/yaaas
