Freiburger Filmforum 1985 – 2023
Since its FOUNDATION in 1985, the festival has been revolving around current, historical, sociopolitical, and cultural themes. In recent years the festival has focused on the question of the Global North’s responsibility regarding its colonial history and the restitution of cultural goods as well as the increasing urbanization and its consequences. Global societal asymmetries are, inevitably, recurring topics.
With #JUNCTIONS and the digitization of the festival in 2021, the Freiburger Filmforum has introduced a new section to its main film week program while also broadening its audience beyond the analog cinema to Nairobi and Karachi. The basic idea behind #JUNCTIONS is to simultaneously screen films in different places then to bring the various audiences together to engage in a transcultural discussion of the movies. The programs are curated together with local groups. We were unfortunately not able to carry out this format as planned in 2021 due to the pandemic, so it will be the highlight of the festival in 2023. In addition to Freiburg, the #JUNCTION_locations will be Nairobi, Kenya, for the second time as well as Ahmedabad, India, for the first time.
The Filmforum’s mission is to present a nuanced picture of the reality of people’s lives in different contexts. Thanks to digitization, the festival is becoming more diverse, and the program selection more multifaceted, while enabling a transnational audience to interconnect. A special section for young and activist cinema was created in 2015 with the STUDENTS PLATFORM. Students from many different universities regard the festival as an opportunity to take a fieldtrip and engage in discussions about film.
In the nineteen editions of the Filmforum so far, roughly 800 films from 90 different countries from every continent have been shown and discussed with audiences.
An event by Kommunales Kino Freiburg