Dis­cov­er new Euro­pean gems for free with ArteKino

There’s prob­a­bly not a minute that goes by when, some­where in the world, a film fes­ti­val isn’t in full swing. And it’s bor­ing old time and geog­ra­phy which stand in the way of us per­pet­u­al­ly watch­ing new movies for every wak­ing minute of our lives. ArteKino is a fes­ti­val which does away with such phys­i­cal imped­i­ments, offer­ing up 10 fea­tures from around Europe and free dig­i­tal admis­sion to any­one with the incli­na­tion to dis­cov­er excit­ing new cinema.

It’s pow­ered by stream­ing plat­form Fes­ti­valScope, it runs from 1 to 31 Decem­ber 2018, and there’s even a prize for the best film, award­ed not by a jury of ran­dom celebri­ties, but you, the view­er. There are a diverse array of titles this year, culled from des­ti­na­tions such as Ger­many (Anna Zohra Berrached’s 24 Weeks), Poland (Mal­go­rza­ta Szumowska’s Mug), Greece (Babis Makri­tis’ Pity) France (Jacky Goldberg’s Flesh Mem­o­ry), and all across the con­ti­nent. To get a lit­tle more insight the festival’s mis­sion, we spoke to Arte’s artis­tic direc­tor, Olivi­er Père.

LWLies: What role do you play in bring­ing this fes­ti­val together?

Père: I’m doing the same job, more or less, as when I was artis­tic direc­tor of the Locarno Film Fes­ti­val. So I’m in charge of the film selec­tion. I cre­at­ed the fes­ti­val three years ago with my part­ner, with the very spe­cif­ic goal of pro­mot­ing more Euro­pean cinema.

In the UK, we don’t real­ly have some­thing that is the equiv­a­lent to Arte. Can you describe its remit?

Arte is a cul­tur­al TV chan­nel. It was cre­at­ed more than 20 years ago as some­thing very new as it was a French-Ger­man TV chan­nel. It was polit­i­cal – a way to reunite France and Ger­many with an ambi­tious TV project. We pro­vide almost iden­ti­cal pro­grammes as Ger­many. We pro­duce a lot of doc­u­men­taries and a lot of fea­ture films. We also give per­mis­sion to oth­er to par­tic­i­pate in the grand tra­di­tion of fea­ture film mak­ing. We have a ded­i­cat­ed cin­e­ma. I also co-pro­duce with oth­ers in the realm of French and Euro­pean film. We pro­duce around 25 fea­ture films each year.

How does the selec­tion process work for ArteKino?

It is a com­mit­tee selec­tion, but I’m in charge of the pre-selec­tion. The process is dif­fer­ent from a pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny or a fes­ti­val event, but it’s true that we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to choose from a large amount of pro­pos­als com­ing from many impor­tant film­mak­ers. We also pay a lot of atten­tion to new­com­ers and emerg­ing film­mak­ers, so it’s a great way to pro­mote and to sup­port art­house cinema.

With ArteKino do you intend to chal­lenge the idea of the tra­di­tion­al festival?

No, it’s not chal­leng­ing the fes­ti­vals that already exist, and it’s not chal­leng­ing cur­rent dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­els. I’m still behind dis­cov­er­ing films in the cin­e­ma. It’s a way of expos­ing peo­ple to these types of film. Since there are a lot of releas­es every year, it is dif­fi­cult to see art­house films in the the­atre. At ArteKino fes­ti­val, we don’t want to be first to show a film, or be an A‑list fes­ti­val, it’s very dif­fer­ent. What we want is to pro­mote films what may have already been at fes­ti­vals like Cannes, Locarno, Berlin or Toron­to, but that didn’t get dis­tri­b­u­tion in many territories.

This is a way to make these films acces­si­ble not only to the fes­ti­val-goers or cinephiles, but for an audi­ence who like to watch films online. We want to give these films a chance to be seen by large audi­ences. The fes­ti­val is free, and it’s in 45 Euro­pean ter­ri­to­ries, so it has a very broad range. It’s not sup­posed to replace fes­ti­vals or cin­e­mas, but to help with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of these films.

What was your deci­sion about cre­at­ing an award that was vot­ed on by audiences?

What is also very unusu­al, com­pared to your usu­al fes­ti­val, is that there’s no jury. It’s ded­i­cat­ed to the largest audi­ence pos­si­ble, so that’s why we cre­at­ed the Audi­ence Award, which goes direct­ly to the direc­tor, to the pro­duc­er and to the inter­na­tion­al sales agent. The sales agent is a very impor­tant part of the fes­ti­val because we have to talk to them to see which films were sold, which films weren’t, and in which ter­ri­to­ries. We want­ed to make it very dig­i­tal, very free and very easy to participate.

ArteKino 2018 is hap­pen­ing through­out Decem­ber. For more info head to artekinofes​ti​val​.com