A total of 63 films, including 34 titles for the International Competition and 28 titles for the National Competition, will compete at 33rd Filmfest Dresden set to take place July 13 to 18, 2021.
30 of the titles are animated films across an extremely wide spectrum of animation techniques, ranging from classic cartoons, to object animation through to 3D computer animation and experimentation with various formats.
In his multiple award-winning experimental animated film SERIAL PARALLELS, the director Max Hattler (National Competition) is portraying the horizontal high-rise street canyons of Hong Kong and animating them to become clattering film strips. Using a mixture of fiction and animation in MEX AND THE ANIMALS from the International Competition, Elisa Gleize has developed the idea of a world in which the animals can only be reconstructed virtually.
Hybrid formats can also be found beyond the animated sections: For instance, Julia Roesler has combined the documentary and the fictional in FREDDA MEYER, which is celebrating its world premiere in the National Competition.
On a thematic level, numerous films in the competition sections are focusing on the search for identity, a home and a place in society. A female choreographer of an advanced age in I’M TOO BUSY from Carmen Aumedes Mier (International Competition) realises that it is now time for a new dance in her life – the jitterbug! In his new work, the animadoc REVOLYKUS in the National Competition, Victor Orozco Ramirez avails of his dilapidated house as a metaphor for his personal story as a migrant.
Questions about body images, ideals of beauty and gender equality are being pursued in a range of films from the competition sections: In MY FAT ARSE AND I in the International Competition, Yelyzaveta Pysmak has adapted the subject of anorexia into a surreal-comic animation. By turn, the story of the emancipation of the female protagonist in YALLAH HABIBI from Mahnas Sarwari (National Competition) is recounted using a new self-image. And self-confidence also radiates from the work SWINGUERRA (International Competition) by the artists Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca: Performed mainly by transgender and nonbinary people, a contemporary dance from Brazil becomes a symbol of liberation and social participation here.
Socio-political developments and their impacts continue to be the focus of numerous stories, such as in A LACK OF CLARITY from Stefan Kruse Jørgensen, which reveals the mechanisms of the surveillance state.
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