The 24th edition of the #goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is set to commence on 24 April, 2024, in Wiesbaden, Germany. The festival, a cultural highlight of the region, is poised to present a rich collection of films with a total of €21,500 in prizes up for grabs. The most prestigious of these, the Golden Lily for Best Film, carries a reward of €10,000.
The festival’s competition section promises an eclectic selection of dramas, documentaries, comedies, satires, and poignant portraits from Eastern and #Central Europe#, offering attendees a panoramic view of the region’s contemporary cinematic landscape. With 16 feature-length films on the docket, the festival aims to confront and articulate the profound conflicts of our time—ranging from armed conflicts and oppression to corruption and anti-Semitism. Moreover, these films often explore personal and societal liberation from entrenched traditional mores.
Opening the festival is the Georgian co-production Crossing, Smiling Georgia, directed by Luka Beradze. This historical satire revisits the bizarre promise of free dentures by President Mikheil Saakashvili during the 2012 Georgian election—a promise that saw rural populations flock to dental clinics, only to be disappointed by political defeat.
Among the notable premieres is Olga Chernykh’s A Picture to Remember, which blends war-torn contemporary #Ukraine with a multi-generational family saga, drawing from Chernykh’s personal archives. This film, having opened the 2023 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), will mark its German debut at goEast.
The festival is also a platform for confronting tough social realities through film. Silence of Reason by Kumjana Novakova, for instance, delves into the traumatic experiences of Bosnian women during the war, while Shoghakat Vardanyan’s 1489 tracks a personal family crisis amidst the #Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Further highlighting the festival’s range is Stepne, a Ukrainian drama by Maryna Vroda that portrays the stark realities of post-Soviet rural life, and KIX, a Hungarian long-term documentary that follows a young skateboarder’s life through a decade, offering a ground-level view of Budapest.
As the festival gears up, it is clear that goEast is a celebration of film and a forum for critical engagement and dialogue, drawing filmmakers and cinephiles alike into the heart of Central and Eastern European stories that resonate with universal themes of struggle, identity, and resilience.
Find more information on the 2024 goEast competition films – HERE
