Quote by Bernd Buder, Program Director Film Festival Cottbus
25.2.2022
"We are in contact with Russian and Ukrainian filmmakers who are suffering in a personal and professional level from the war and the associated political pressure. I am also personally very affected and am afraid that the war is getting closer.
At the beginning of the 2000s, there was a phase that was full of hope for fruitful cooperation, co-productions, and creative collaborations throughout Eastern Europe - not only in the film industry. There was an approach, an energetic curiosity, an opportunity to talk and work with each other at the same level. However, since 2010, this process has step by step been reversed, as nationalist propaganda poisons the dialogue, creative minds fall silent under domestic political pressure, the statements became empty on all sides and the nuances disappear behind increasingly unambiguous, doctrinaire statements.
Over the last festival years, we have repeatedly shown films in Cottbus that have dealt intensively with the situation in Ukraine. The films depicted the country's internal democratization process, as well as the armed conflicts in the east of the country. Traditionally, Russia is also in the focus of our program. The film business there is divided. After the arrest of director Oleg Senzow in 2014, there were protests from the Russian film industry professionals against the arrest. There are also many voices from Russia against the current conflict.
We at the FilmFestival Cottbus will continue to be in contact with both sides to maintain the dialogue where it is needed. Culture has the task of keeping the conversation alive, even when politics has reached an end. We know that there are many people in Russia who wish for dialogue, who do not want to support the current expansionist policy and who want to conduct the discourse through cinematic means instead of brutally ending it with tanks, missiles, bloodshed and human suffering."