Freiburger Filmforum

Freiburger Filmforum offers a platform for lovingly curated films with a focus on non-European cinema. The film festival is particularly interested in paying attention to groups, cultures and milieus that are often overviewed by the ethnocentric gaze of many European film festivals. The Filmforum aims to bring people in dialogue across borders and cultures. Therefore, it offers a mix of current documentaries and feature films, a students' film forum for young talented filmmakers, a retrospective on ethnographic film and panel discussions.

Having visited the festival twice, 2017 (in presence) and 2021 (online), I would say what makes this festival special is its decided interest in non-European cinema and discourses on anti-fascism, anti-racism and decoloniality.
As well as its location. The cinema is located in an old train station building with only one screen. Which means that there are no parallel screenings and festival participants potentially have the chance to watch all the films together. This programming creates a very familiar atmosphere. Outside the cinema hall you can quickly get into conversation with the other (international) festival participants about the films, which doesn’t happen so easily at big festivals like Cannes or Berlinale.
For comparison: The Duisburger Filmwoche operates a similar format, with only one theatre and a focus on discursive exchange about the films screened. In contrast to Freiburg, however, only documentaries with a German, Austrian or Swiss film production are shown here – which makes it a relatively Eurocentric festival.

Most specifically the offered panel discussions feature subaltern topics. During the last edition of the film festival in 2021 a panel with the title ‘If Objects Could speak - What would you answer?’ focused on the restitution of African cultural heritage. A discourse that has gained more and more attention in recent years, at the latest since the ‘report on the restitution of African cultural heritage’ in 2018 by Senegalese social scientist Felwine Sarr and French art historian Bénédicte Savoy, a report that was commissioned by Emmanuel Macron's after a speech he held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in late 2017. Kindly find a link to the panel in the ‘material’ section.

Link to material #1 - (Vimeo Video, 2h04)
Panel: If Objects Could speak - What would you answer?
Panel via zoom with His Majesty Makorani Mungase VII, King of the Pokomo and custodian of the Ngaji, the Sacred Drum / George Juma Ondeng´, National Museums of Kenya & International Inventories Programme / Dr. Sandra Ferracuti, former curator of Africa-collection at Linden-Museum Stuttgart, Anthropologist at University of Rome / Elena Schilling & Saitabao Kaiyare directors of If Objects Could Speak

Location	Germany
Original language(s)	German, English
Existing translations
Length	10 days
Project runtime	1985 -
Institution of affiliation	Kommunales Kino Freiburg
Sponsor(s)	Freiburg im Breisgau City MFG Baden-Würtemberg Baden-Würtemberg Ministry of Science, Research and Art Sparkasse Brot für die Welt Katholischer Fonds dap docubox Goethe Institute Offenburg University University Freiburg Source

Name of contributor: Samuel Döring