The 23rd goEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film will take place in Wiesbaden from 26 April to 2 May. This year’s programme also includes several films from Central Asia. Novastan is a media partner of the festival.

On 26 April it’s that time again: the 23rd goEast film festival opens its doors and invites you to Wiesbaden to gain insights into the current film landscape of Central and Eastern Europe. “Eastern Europe at eye level – that has been the motto of goEast since the 1st festival edition. The aim is to talk not only ABOUT Eastern Europe, but WITH Eastern Europe. In times of war and cultural misunderstandings, dialogue forums like ours are more important than ever,” explained festival director Heleen Gerritsen in the run-up to the event.

A special focus of both the film programme and the accompanying events is decolonisation, which will be the subject of this year’s symposium “Decolonising the (Post-) Soviet Screen”. In the panel “Post-, neo-, and de-colonial Central Asia: human rights activism and collective filmmaking” [29.4., 13:00 – 14:30 / Museum Wiesbaden], Aıda Adilbek (Kazakhstan), Umida Akhmedova (Uzbekistan), Gulsat Egemberdijeva (Kyrgyzstan) and Anisa Sabiri (Tajikistan) will discuss the topic.

Central Asian Films in Competition

In the competition of the festival, current film productions compete for the three main prizes awarded by an international jury: the “Golden Lily” endowed with 10,000 euros, the Best Director Award of the State Capital Wiesbaden endowed with 7,500 euros and the CEEOL Award for the best documentary film endowed with 4,000 euros. There are also two feature length films from Central Asia.

In GOLIATH [29.04, 15.00 / Caligari and 30.04, 20.0 /Apollo], a “Kazakh revenge western” by Adilkhan Yerzhanov, the filmmaker takes us to a provincial village, as he did previously in A dark, dark man and The Plague at the Karatas Village. There, the powerful gangster boss Poshaev rules, opposed by the villager Arzu. David versus Goliath story retold.

THIS IS WHAT I REMEMBER [01.05, 20.00 / Caligari and 02.05, 14.00 /Apollo] tells the story of Zarlyk, who returns to Kyrgyzstan after 20 years of work in Russia. He can’t remember anything except his work. As in The Wings of Man, director Aktan Arym Kubat draws a sensitive portrait of society using the example of a likeable oddball.

Short and sweet

In the competition of the RheinMain Short Film Award is ARALKUM [in the first slot on 01.05, 16.00 / Murnau] by Daniel Asadi Faezi and Mila Zhluktenko. The film is dedicated to the notorious Aralkum Desert on the bottom of the dried-up Aral Sea.

Friends of short film will also get their money’s worth outside the main competition: THE BURDEN OF VIRGINITY + DAVRA COLLECTIVE SHORT FILM PROGRAMME [29 April, 9.30 pm / Murnau] shows a series of short films from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan that deal with questions of decolonisation, gender and belonging.

Media partnership

GoEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is organised by the DFF (Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum) and supported by numerous partners. This year Novastan is once more among the media partners of the festival. We will be present on site to report live first-hand – here and in our social networks.

The entire programme of the 23rd goEast film festival can be downloaded here. A single ticket costs 8 euros (reduced 7 euros), a day ticket 20 euros (reduced 17 euros). More information about the festival can be found on the festival homepage.

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