For our 40th anniversary, the grand art of motion pictures can be enjoyed all over town. A total of 147 films from 61 countries will find their temporary home on the big screen in Munich from June 24 to July 1. The festival program is centered around three major competitions, each involving 12 films.

This year, for the second time, the new CineRebels section will feature films whose radical and daring storytelling goes against the grain of cinematic convention. The CineRebels Award, worth 10,000 euros, is sponsored by our main partner, AUDI, and presented by a three-member jury. The competition entries include the Icelandic documentary BAND, a tragicomic story of the spectacular (repeated) failure of the director’s own band and the art of moving on together, and the Nigerian genre film MAMI WATER, which questions traditional belief systems in stunning black-and-white imagery. In PORNOMELANCHOLIA, a hybrid of documentary and feature film, a sex influencer explores what happens to one’s desire when turning one’s sexuality into a profession.

Band

PORNOMELANChOLIA

Mami Wata

Equally fearless and confident cinema is waiting to be discovered among the up-and-coming directors in the CineVision series. ANIMALIA, for example, is an atmospheric and philosophical science-fiction film from Morocco in which a Berber woman has no choice but to emancipate herself from the privileged milieu of Moroccan society. THE INSPECTION is an autobiographical film in which director Elegance Bratton comes to terms with his own experience as a homosexual recruit in the US Marine Corps. An unusual but all the more exciting approach is taken by the Brazilian film THE BURITI FLOWER, developed and filmed in collaboration with the indigenous Krahô people. EARTH MAMA, about a mother’s day-to-day struggle, puts young black cinema from the United States in competition for the 15,000-euro CineVision Award, sponsored by MPLC Deutschland GmbH.

Black cinema can also be found among the noted established directors in the CineMasters series. The visually expressive film BROTHER, for example, tells of the indestructible bond between two black brothers amid gang violence and harassment by the police in 1990s Toronto. Also exceptional is the Colombian coming-of-age drama THE KINGS OF THE WORLD, featuring real street kids in Medellín, Colombia. In addition, there is great storytelling by veteran master directors. Marco Belloccio, for example, tells a story about the abuse of power in the Catholic Church in KIDNAPPED, and Ari Kaurismäki’s laconic tragicomedy FALLEN LEAVES is set in a Helsinki lost in time. You can also look forward to MONSTER, the latest film by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, a two-time recipient of the 50,000-euro ARRI Award presented in the CineMasters Competition.

Discover all the films of the 40th FILMFEST MÜNCHEN here.