Film Festival Cottbus - Festival of East European Cinema

Film Festival Cottbus is a leading festival of East European Cinema. Itincludes the annual representative overview of current feature film production in the whole of the East European region (countries of the former Eastern Bloc), it is internationally unique regarding the scope of the programme and diversity of countries, quality and topicality of the film selection, it has a clearly structured programme with a concentration on feature films, including short feature films and children's films.

Focuses on East European features + short and children's films: November 6 - 11, 2012.

According to the regulations a film is considered to be East European if the producer or one of the co-producers is based in one of the successor states of the former «socialist» European countries (including the former Soviet Union as well as ex-Yugoslavia) and if it is made in one of the languages of this region.

INFO 2011:
PROGRAM SECTIONS
Feature Film Competition
Submitted entries must be East European feature films and longer than 60 minutes (including documentary and experimental films with a feature film character), provided the works in question involve the German premiere of the first to fifth feature film of the respective (co-)director and completed after January 1st, 2010.
Short Feature Competition
Same conditions as for the Feature Film Competition. The films should not be longer than 30 minutes. Priority will be given to German premieres of young filmmakers.
U18 German-Polish Youth Film Competition
This festival section features current productions from Germany and Poland, as well as co-productions between the two countries which, by means of their youth-specific subject matters, are aimed primarily at a younger audience. Alongside full-length films, medium-length productions (with a running time of at least twenty-five minutes) are also eligible for submission; German submissions should not yet have been shown on domestic cinema screens, a stipulation which ideally also applies to Polish submissions.
Further sections
Feature length and short films will be shown also in the sections Retrospective, Specials, National Hit, Russkiy Den, Polskie Horyzonty, globalEAST, Focus (2011: Regions of Eastern Europe) and Children’s film. In addition student films and video productions may be programmed. These works will be selected upon invitation.