Dis­cov­er the dig­i­tal film fes­ti­val where you’re on the jury

With most film fes­ti­vals cel­e­brat­ing the long-await­ed return to in-per­son screen­ings, ArteKino remains a torch­bear­er for vir­tu­al view­ing. The fes­ti­val takes a love for cin­e­ma and opens it up to the Euro­pean pub­lic – with no advance Covid tests required – by offer­ing anoth­er edi­tion of robust pro­gram­ming to discover.

Europe-based audi­ences with the incli­na­tion to seek out excit­ing new films and catch the hot new auteurs before they’ve explod­ed onto the scene have a selec­tion of 12 fea­tures to choose from in the 2021 ArteKino line-up: from fes­ti­val favourites to unsung gems that, despite crit­i­cal suc­cess gar­nered at fes­ti­vals, haven’t had the ease of find­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion in movie theatres.

From 1 – 31 Decem­ber, view­ers across 32 Euro­pean coun­tries, includ­ing the UK, can explore the selec­tion in six close cap­tion lan­guages (French, Ger­man, Eng­lish, Span­ish, Ital­ian, Pol­ish) acces­si­ble through arte​.tv and ARTE Ciné­ma on YouTube. Being entire­ly free and unequiv­o­cal­ly pro­mot­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion, view­er­ship lies at the heart of this col­lab­o­ra­tion between cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming chan­nel ARTE and screen­ing plat­form Fes­ti­val Scope, giv­ing view­ers the chance to vote for our favourite film to win the ArteKino Audi­ence Award. So all there is left to ask is, what does this year’s pro­gramme have in store?

The curat­ed selec­tion com­bines poet­ry and pol­i­tics, sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and authen­tic­i­ty, inno­cence, lone­li­ness and strug­gle for sur­vival, offer­ing a snap­shot of the eclec­tic spir­it at the core of con­tem­po­rary Euro­pean cinema.

Gen­der and hard­ship are cen­tral to this year’s the­mat­ic under­tak­ings. Call Me Mar­i­an­na is Karoli­na Bielwka’s first fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary, and it swept four awards at Krakow before win­ning the Zon­ta Club Prize at Locarno. We enter the pri­vate sphere of a 40 year old Pol­ish trans woman who has legal­ly had to sue her par­ents in order to pur­sue sex reas­sign­ment surgery. The film express­es the tur­moil of being trapped in a prison of flesh that doesn’t feel yours, as much as the solace that gen­der affirm­ing surgery can offer to a trans per­son liv­ing in Poland.

Anoth­er emo­tion­al doc­u­men­tary on women whose courage doesn’t waver lies in Masha Kondakova’s doc­u­men­tary Inner Wars, which takes the film­mak­er direct­ly into a war­zone. The ongo­ing con­flict between Ukraine and Rus­sia is pre­sent­ed through the eyes of three Ukrain­ian women on the front­line who are also con­sis­tent­ly fight­ing on the front against patri­ar­chal stan­dards and the media’s car­i­ca­tured rep­re­sen­ta­tions of women in the army.

An unex­pect­ed rela­tion­ship forms the basis of Nathalie Biancheri’s kitchen-sink dra­ma Noc­tur­nal, in which an emo­tion­al­ly stunt­ed yet sen­si­tive brute in his 30s forms a pre­car­i­ous friend­ship with a 17-year-old stu­dent, pro­vid­ing a com­pelling por­trait of flawed mas­culin­i­ty and a remark­able per­for­mance by British actor Cos­mo Jarvis. In Sühey­la Schwenk’s Jiyan, a sim­i­lar unlike­ly rela­tion­ship devel­ops between a young moth­er and her aunt-in-law, after a young cou­ple moves from Syr­ia to Berlin to pro­vide a bet­ter life for their unborn child.

With an inti­mate por­trait of her broth­er and moth­er, Palo­ma Sermon-Daï’s Petit Same­di looks at a painful rela­tion­ship with addic­tion and depen­dence which inter­twines the per­son­al and famil­ial. A fam­i­ly liv­ing in the idyl­lic South­ern Ital­ian coun­try­side, where Sara Summa’s The Last to See Them takes place, lives its last moments of quo­tid­i­an sim­plic­i­ty with an over­ar­ch­ing sense of fore­bod­ing. Mater­nal love and its shift­ing mean­ings are also explored in Jonas Bak’s atmos­pher­ic Wood and Water, a psy­cho­log­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tion of a woman who, upon enter­ing retire­ment, aban­dons her soli­tary life in rur­al Ger­many to trav­el to protest-rid­den Hong Kong.

Polit­i­cal cri­tique frames the hybrid doc Upper­case Print, a 2020 Berli­nale favourite by pro­lif­ic direc­tor Radu Jude. A for­got­ten piece of Ukran­ian his­to­ry is drama­tised through the the­atri­cal con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion of a Roman­ian teenager’s protest against the dic­ta­tor­ship of Ceaus­es­cu. The­atri­cal recon­struc­tion is jux­ta­posed with archival footage and looks at state sur­veil­lance, the banal­i­ty of dic­ta­tor­ship, and the vital­i­ty of Roman­ian youth.

Astute explo­rations of ado­les­cence are to be found in LOMO: The Lan­guage of Many Oth­ers by Julia Lang­hof, a por­trait of online com­ing of age and com­put­erised teenage angst, as well as Ivan Ikić’s Oasis, where an unan­tic­i­pat­ed love tri­an­gle forms between three teenagers nav­i­gat­ing feel­ings of desire and envy in a spe­cial needs insti­tu­tion. Blos­som­ing teen friend­ships in the sub­urbs of Zurich is Karin Heberlein’s con­tri­bu­tion to com­ing of age with Sami, Joe and I, while Marysia Nikitiuk’s tact­ful por­tray­al of inno­cence, frag­ment­ed iden­ti­ty and trag­ic romance in When the Trees Fall, looks at rur­al Ukraine through a lens of mag­i­cal realism.

As you can see from this line-up, this is a selec­tion of engaged and engag­ing works which seeks to explore the tri­als, tribu­la­tions and trau­mas of con­tem­po­rary Europe. Watch them all and vote for the one which speaks to you the loudest.

ArteKino 2021 runs from 1 to 30 Decem­ber. For more info vis­it artekinofes​ti​val​.arte​.tv