goEast – 20th Festival of Central and Eastern European Film

The festival shared its program between online streaming and video on demand. The FIPRESCI jury will presented one prize for a fiction film in competition, and another prize for a documentary in competition.

Best Feature: Rounds (V krag) by Stephan Komandarev (Bulgaria, Serbia, France, 2019, 106 min). Motivation: “Through a well-written script, intelligent directing and excellent acting, Bulgarian director Stephan Komandarev gives us a poignant look at a country under chaos where corruption and violence dominate it. The director’s criticism of his society gets its power combining black humor, absurdity and sarcasm. When night falls in Bulgaria’s capital, the real talk begins. Rounds is a brutally honest yet elegantly built trip that caught our attention from the very start.”

Best Documentary Film: State Funeral (Proshanie so stalinym) by Sergei Loznitsa (Netherlands, Lithuania, 2019, 135 min). Motivation: “A fascinating documentary whose power is in its visuals – no narration, no interviewers, no sophisticated directing but mostly editing. Visuals and music combined together make Sergei Loznitsa’s State Funeral into an accessible piece of history. A peerless experience and a morbid time travel none of us will ever forget.”