Around 58,000 guests attended the 40th Munich Film Festival. From the point of view of the organizers, this shows that people are enjoying going to the cinema and exchanging ideas again. At the finale on Saturday, the outgoing festival director Diana Iljine said: “What a nice farewell with wonderful guests from all over the world.”
Her designated successor and artistic director Christoph Gröner was pleased that the audience and the industry had embraced innovations. For example, he mentioned an AI pavilion and world premieres of international films. “We’re really going back to basics: a film festival that wants above all to be a film festival, accessible, exciting and for everyone who loves film.”
The highlight of the last day of the festival was the presentation of the outstanding prizes. The Bayern 2 and “SZ” audience prize went to “Fallende Blatter” by Aki Kaurismäki. “New Stories from Pumuckl” by Marcus H. Rosenmüller received the Children’s Film Festival Audience Award.
Since June 23, the annual summer film festival in the Bavarian capital has shown new works from the German and international film industry. According to the organizers, there were 147 films from 61 countries, including 43 world premieres.
“The Munich Film Festival was great again this year: diverse, cosmopolitan and highly professional,” explained Bavaria’s Digital Minister Judith Gerlach (CSU). She spoke of “socially highly relevant highlights”. Festival director Diana Iljine was on the film festival stage in this capacity for the last time this year. After the anniversary edition, she is giving up her position on October 1 after twelve years.
