Medienecho 2012

(selection)
 
Meeting of young European cinema – Whether feature film, documentary or animation, art and politics are not seen as separate from one another in Linz. The diversity of the program this year was again a successful mixture of new forms of expression and commitment in content, always searching for film-art expression beyond the commercial mainstream.
Deutschlandradio Kultur (Wolfgang Martin Hamdorf // 29 April 2012)
 
Inspiration from all over Europe – For barely one week [...], Crossing Europe in Linz, Upper Austria, is a pool of encounters and discoveries. It’s impossible to tell where Christine Dollhofer, the festival director, and her team get their keen sense from, but it is certainly worth visiting the various series – twelve this year – with watchful eyes and open minds. There could be a film maker there who will attract a lot of attention in a few years.
Film & TV Kameramann (Philipp von Lucke // 20 May 2012)
 
Intimacies – The audience chuckles with delight: a gay romantic comedy and the portrait of an indie record shop with its customers. Even that is to be found at Crossing Europe.
A film about gay love, that’s not something heteros would watch. More likely stories about refugees or rapes, says Glen, one of the two protagonists in “Weekend”. Yesterday evening at the Crossing Europe Festival in Linz, however, the opposite was true, every seat was filled in City-Kino. Halfway through the festival for willful and especially for socio-political auteur cinema from Europe, there were obviously many in search of bliss on the screen.
fm4.orf.at (Maria Motter // 27 April 2012)
 
“A civilization that has lost its memory and stumbles along from day to day, from occurrence to occurrence, is more irresponsible than cattle, because cattle have the security of instincts.” This is what it says in Siegfried Giedion’s illuminating study “Mechanization Takes Command”: a more apt comment on the subject matter of many of the films presented this year at the film festival “Crossing Europe” could not be found.
Kirchzeitung – Diözese Linz (Markus Vorauer // 19 April 2012)
 
Festival of innovative film – Linz is becoming the Mecca of international auteur cinema.
Kleine Zeitung Klagenfurt (23 April 2012)
 
Poetry of everyday life – The Linz film festival “Crossing Europe”, which opened today, Tuesday in the new Culture Quarter”, brings films to Linz that tell the stories of outsiders or losers. The films are distinguished by compelling images, finely developed dialogues and closeness to a “poetry of everyday reality”.
Kronen Zeitung Oberösterreich (Elisabeth Rathenböck // 24 April 2012)
 
Crossing Europe 2012: Platform for committed auteur cinema – Although the Linz film festival Crossing Europe has to cope with the loss of a main sponsor, Festival Director Christine Dollhofer and her team have still provided a diverse program again with about 150 feature films, documentaries and short films. The festival centers again around young European auteur cinema, punctuated with works by great masters. The section “Night Sight” also provides a contrast program again this year, presenting European horror films. [...] So altogether it is a program with a diversity and radical abstinence that makes the festival something to be anticipated with great pleasure.
kultur-online.net (Walter Gasperi // 13 April 2012)
 
Following announcements about shrinking budgets, now it is again the European filmmakers whose voices are heard at the ninth Crossing Europe Film Festival in Linz. [...] The energetic festival director does not waste much time with pessimism. After gently reminding the political representatives present of their funding responsibilities, she graciously wove the sponsors who have remained loyal into the proceedings. [...] Yet the most beautiful response to financial woes is still always the art itself. And since Dollhofer knows this, she brought three young actresses from selected festival films onto the stage. Anjela Nedyalkova, main protagonist of the Bulgarian road movie “AVE”, summarized it succinctly. Some people urge her into television series, but she says: “I want art!” And there will certainly be enough film art in the days to come until Sunday.
kurier.at (Peter Temel // 28 April 2012)
 
The year the international film festival Crossing Europe takes place in Linz for the ninth time. What is astonishing about this: the number of films increases from year to year, and the visitor numbers are growing just like the number of articles published around the world. Only the budget cannot keep up. With about 480,000 Euro, the organizers have to make do with 30,000 Euro less than last year. It was not possible to fully compensate for the loss of the major sponsor A1 that was announced in late 2011.
Kurier Österreich (13 April 2012)
 
 
A young audience storms the Culture Quarter – When the film festival Crossing Europe took place in Linz for the first time in 2004, I reported about 8500 visitors. For a pilot festival, the event was quite successful, said the director Christine Dollhofer at that time. In 2012 the energetic festival director can refer to 21,000 visitors and a success story. In the beginning, many people hardly expected her to have a chance to carry out this event more than once. [...] And now this little film seedling than has long since taken root is still blossoming and flourishing, even putting out new branches, such as the series with animation films this year. [...] The fact that local artists also have a platform here for presenting their films is magnificent. And so is the fact that so much of a young audience celebrates this festival.
Neues Volksblatt (Philipp Wagenhofer // 30 April 2012)
 
For connoisseurs of the unconventional – vibrating sounds, shrill images, breathless dialogues. The film festival Crossing Europe is one of the most explosively creative hubs for innovative filmmakers from Austria and abroad.
Oberösterreichische Nachrichten (Evelyn Baier // 13 April 2012)
 
When crows screech and the fog lifts – Crossing Europe as a film festival of extremes. The ninth edition of the Crossing Europe Film Festival is still devoted to European auteur cinema, from elegant film versions of literature to experimental short animation films. [...] A total of 146 feature films, documentaries and short films are shown. 22 of them are world premieres, 96 Austrian premieres. The journey to Linz is not that far in terms of kilometers from within Austria – but in this case it leads to the remote cinematic outposts of Europe – an offer well worth the trip.
orf.at (Simon Hadler // 23 April 2012)
 
The Festival Crossing Europe stands for cinephile and border-crossing diversity.
ORF Teletext (26 April 2012)
 
Radiance – The festival "Crossing Europe" temporarily turns Linz into the center of cinema. Now in the ninth year, Festival Director Christine Dollhofer has again assembled an exquisite and dense program that turns Linz into the film capital of Europe for six days.
profil (Stefan Grissemann // 23 April 2012)
 
Soon: Crossing Europe 2012 – Anyone still looking for reasons to take a trip to OÖ (my favorite abbreviation for Upper Austria) can take this one: compelling auteur films, a little genre, party, hospitality, and the charming dialect of the natives.
raeuberin.com (Emel Mangel // 1 March 2012)
 
Crossing Europe showed cineastic delicacies outside the mainstream again this year.
Raiffeisen Zeitung (Eva Pakisch // 10 May 2012)
 
Favorite festival – Crossing Europe 2012: This year, as it was announced at the closing press conference, the Crossing Europe Film Festival in Linz registered the most successful year in its existence. And that even though the bright sunshine every day invited visiting the Danube. It is probably due to the program that Christine Dollhofer and her team put together that people still preferred to go to the cinema and find out something about the world, rather than feeling ancient among the partying teenagers on the banks of the river. [...] That Crossing Europe succeeds every year again in conveying this kind of overview – particularly an idea of the current situation, the political and the social situation as well as that of film aesthetics – and that quite thoroughly, this is what makes the festival so special. And absolutely worth a visit.
ray-magazin.at (Alexandra Seitz // May 2012)
 
The social event cinema – Crossing Europe. The film festival in Linz goes into its ninth round this year – and that full of energy despite budget cuts.
Salzburger Nachrichten (Magdalena Miedl // 24 April 2012)
 
Social-critical films are an essential component of the Crossing Europe Film Festival. Inequalities and grievances are tracked down with an exact view and brought to the screen.
schnitt.de (Cornelis Hähnel // 28 April 2012)
 
No stars, but good ideas instead. The ninth edition of Crossing Europe showed that the Linz festival has developed into an event for a young audience. Crossing Europe is more than the sum of its films. In addition to congenial people, its atmosphere is marked by suitable facilities. Throughout the week it was noticeable in the cinemas that the festival has cultivated a loyal international and local audience since its start in 2004. At the same time, there are no essential compromises in the content.
Der Standard (Dominik Kamalzadeh & Isabella Reicher // 30 April 2012)
 
The Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz has everything that makes film-lovers happy: clever feature films and illuminating documentaries from all over Europe are shown from 24 to 29 April, horror films ranging from dark to crazy in the meanwhile legendary “Night Sight”, and then it’s possible to keep dancing until the early hours of the morning with the framework program. [...] Again this year, during Crossing Europe Linz became the the meeting point for an enthusiastic crowd of visitors – the Linz audience haunted all the cinemas as well as the famous Nightline, international guests, including actors, filmmakers, journalists and producers, expressed their enthusiasm again for the family-like charm of the nevertheless highly professional festival. How much the festival does to make Linz well known, however, does not seem to interest local politicians much. The budget is insufficient.
tele.at (Julia Pühringer // 30 April)
 
Approaches to life – In the diversity of its film selection, Crossing Europe has again succeeded in balancing between art and popular cinema.
Wiener Zeitung (Alexandra Zawia & Matthias Greuling // 28 April 2012)