It's five minutes to twelve - Bernd Buder in Kłodzko

Bernd Buder:

‘On my way from Finále Pilsen to the Gdynia Film Festival, I passed through Kłodzko, which was particularly hard hit by the flood disaster a fortnight ago.

The small town in Lower Silesia was the location for Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert's latest film WOMAN OF (Poland, Sweden 2023), a dark biography of transvestites in the Polish provinces from socialism to the present day. The short drive through the desolate streets left a lasting impression on me. So many values, livelihoods and memories were destroyed. Yet ‘only’ one environmental disaster of many.

How many more such reminders do we need to make our lifestyle more environmentally friendly?

Incidentally, Kłodzko is quite beautiful - certainly worth a visit.

The Cottbus Film Festival regularly focuses on environmental and sustainability issues in its ‘EcoEast’ section.

This year's programme includes nine documentaries, feature films and short films, including DRY SEASON, the new feature film by Czech director Bohdam Slama, which shows a divided society in the Czech countryside that has fallen out not least over climate protection issues, the bitterly evil distopian animated mini-series THE IMPACT, in which the rich are still trying to escape from the contaminated earth, and the Lithuanian documentary LIFE AND DEATH OF A CHRISTMAS TREE, which shows how Georgian fir tree seeds grow into Christmas trees in Denmark, only to end up in our living rooms as Nordmann fir trees. ’