Germany’s leading indie film event, Oldenburg Film Festival, returned to Lower Saxony with an almost implausibly consistent line-up that included grotesque Mexican satire, hard-hitting political cinema from Myanmar and an array of interesting genre cinema.
The eccentric Canadian bicycle comedy ‘James’ claimed the Best Film prize at Oldenburg 2024.
An elderly man savours the small things on what might be his final day alive in Antonin Bonnot’s patient and touching short, At Dawn.
A checkpoint stop en route to Tehran leads to a young boy being held for drug possession. A moral quandary ensues in the emotive short, Alone Together.
The director and actress couple Na Gyi and Paing Phyo Thu have been in hiding since having to flee after their arrest was ordered by the military junta in 2021.
The tale of Maximilian of Habsburg and Charlotte of Belgium is reimagined in A History of Love and War, an anarchic, absurdist black comedy about colonisation and corruption in a fantastical Mexico.
A man finds himself confined in a doorless room in Nicolai Schumann’s claustrophobic monochrome character study, The Lonely Musketeer, built on a remarkable performance by Edward Hogg.
First-time filmmaker Truman Kewley describes his emotions screening ‘Beautiful Friend’ to audiences, in a journey that began at last year’s Oldenburg Film Festival.
Two young children are left to find their own way when their father commits suicide in Diego Gaxiola’s poignant magical realist short, Nostalgia of a (Still) Alive Heart.
Mitzi Peirone’s sophomore feature, Saint Clare, about a college student on a mission from God to rid the world of predatory men is stylish, weird, sometimes overdone – and a blast.
Maurice O’Carroll’s propulsive boxing-cum-crime drama, Swing Bout, bristles with the energy of the ring in this tale of young hopefuls waiting for their chance.
Edgar Pera uses AI-generated imagery to envisage a meandering , hallucinatory conversation between the authors Fernando Pessoa and H.P. Lovecraft in Telepathic Letters.
A woman in smalltown Montana has a near miss with a serial killer but becomes obsessed with being his victim the dark, absorbing drama – Bits.
A doctor goes on a dreamlike odyssey into sexual temptation in Traumnovelle, a new adaption of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novella, which has an archness fitting its absurdity.
Religious rumours combine with a blood moon eclipse and a girl’s journey to womanhood in Mi Bestia, a beguiling coming-of-ager with fantasy elements from Camila Beltran.
Secrets and lies combine with an air of surrealism in Electra, Hala Matar’s fresh and funny riff on Greek myth, Hitchcock and Highsmith, all dripping with Italian style.
A young woman confronts her true self in the mirror in this beautifully shot and symbolic evocation of an individual’s transition from female to male in Leo Behrens’ Skin.
Oldenburg, Germany’s premiere indie film festival, returns
Germany’s leading indie film event, Oldenburg Film Festival, returned to Lower Saxony with an almost implausibly consistent line-up that included grotesque Mexican satire, hard-hitting political cinema from Myanmar and an array of interesting genre cinema.
The eccentric Canadian bicycle comedy ‘James’ claimed the Best Film prize at Oldenburg 2024.
An elderly man savours the small things on what might be his final day alive in Antonin Bonnot’s patient and touching short, At Dawn.
A checkpoint stop en route to Tehran leads to a young boy being held for drug possession. A moral quandary ensues in the emotive short, Alone Together.
The director and actress couple Na Gyi and Paing Phyo Thu have been in hiding since having to flee after their arrest was ordered by the military junta in 2021.
The tale of Maximilian of Habsburg and Charlotte of Belgium is reimagined in A History of Love and War, an anarchic, absurdist black comedy about colonisation and corruption in a fantastical Mexico.
A man finds himself confined in a doorless room in Nicolai Schumann’s claustrophobic monochrome character study, The Lonely Musketeer, built on a remarkable performance by Edward Hogg.
First-time filmmaker Truman Kewley describes his emotions screening ‘Beautiful Friend’ to audiences, in a journey that began at last year’s Oldenburg Film Festival.
Two young children are left to find their own way when their father commits suicide in Diego Gaxiola’s poignant magical realist short, Nostalgia of a (Still) Alive Heart.
Mitzi Peirone’s sophomore feature, Saint Clare, about a college student on a mission from God to rid the world of predatory men is stylish, weird, sometimes overdone – and a blast.