54th Mannheim International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg

Under the direction of Michael Kötz, the festival specializes “in the discovery of new talents”. It presents “only newcomer films that are to a large extent unknown to the international film industry”. The selection, writes the festival, is “rigorous, strictly reserved to quality, without any compromises.”

The festival has two main sections: “International Competition” and “International Discoveries”. This year, a selection of around 35 new feature films was presented, mainly fiction films but also cinematographically interesting documentaries and short films.

Our jury saw the films in competition and awarded the Critics’ Prize to Toss Up (Yazi tura) by Ugur Yücel (Turkey) — a film that leads back to the Kurdish war in Eastern Anatolia and talks about two young men who try to get over their war traumas.