55th Mannheim International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg

The words “Happiness and Adventure” and a couple kissing in a corner of a room next to a relief painting showing a beautiful old fashioned sailboat. This scene from the astonishing short film Empty (Tühirand) from Estonia on the festival poster already showed what the 55th edition of the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg in Germany wants to be: a place for discoveries in emotions and pictures. It’s a festival for the audience, 30,000 people are watching the movies every year, mostly first and second feature films in the international competition, but there is also a short film competition, a sidebar called “international discoveries” and a prize of honor for an acclaimed director which will be called “master of cinema”. He receives a diploma and some of his movies are shown; this year the honor went to Aleksandr Sokurov form Russia. The FIPRESCI jury decided to give their prize to Franck Guérin from France and his first feature film A Summer Day (Un jour d’été), an extraordinary story about love and soccer and death and growing up.