As an established cultural institution, the MUNICH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL has always offered a space for the respectful exchange of different perspectives. In addition to around 150 films, many of which deal with socio-political issues, there will once again be panels and Q&A sessions with filmmakers and experts who will take a look at the challenges of our time.  

“In the last few years, it’s become abundantly clear that our democracy is fragile! It’s all the more important now to use the power of cinema to counter anti-democratic tendencies. Films portray the world’s diversity and enable people to see things from different perspectives. This is a way to overcome divisions that seem insurmountable. This is a way to bring about understanding and dialogue!” say Christoph Gröner, festival director, and Julia Weigl, artistic co-director of the Munich International Film Festival. 

In order to understand current developments, it is essential take another critical look at the Nazi past. It shows how quickly democratic structures can be destroyed - it only took a few months in 1933 - and what is at stake when fascism spreads. This year, the MUNICH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL is presenting a variety of films and series that draw parallels between past and present.

THE SPOILS

FÜHRER AND SEDUCER
PHoto: Stephan Pick/Zeitsprung Pictures/SWR/Wild Bunch Germany

FÜHRER AND SEDUCER examines the inner workings of the Nazi regime, in particular the strategies Joseph Goebbels used to manipulate public opinion. The then head of Reich propaganda was one of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust. He recognized the power of images early on and consciously used them for his ideological warfare. This film alternates between dramatized scenes, archival footage, and eyewitness accounts to illustrate the mechanisms of propaganda.

In THE SPOILS, director Jamie Kastner focuses on Nazi-looted art. To this day, the question of who owns it is still being debated. Kastner's starting point for his film is the exhibition in honor of the Jewish art dealer Max Stern at the Düsseldorf City Museum, which opened in 2021. It is a documentary about ownership and morality.  

LEE
PHoto: Kimberly French/Sky UK Ltd

THE INVESTIGATION
Photo: Hans-Joachim Pfeiffer

SHADOWTOWER
Photo: Jürgen Olczyk

The film LEE is an intense portrait of war photographer Lee Miller, who documented the horrors of the Buchenwald and Dachau camps after their liberation. Her most famous picture, of Miller posing in Hitler’s bathtub, was taken in 1945.

THE INVESTIGATION is an ensemble film that brings Peter Weiss’s eponymous 1965 stage play to the big screen. It is based on records, newspaper articles, and transcripts of the first Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt.

The miniseries SHADOW TOWER deals with the legacy of National Socialism in the present day: antisemitism and far-right extremism. After right-wing extremists murder the daughter of Ephraim Zamir, a former special agent of the Israeli secret service Mossad, he takes the perpetrators captive and puts their fate to an online vote. The hostage-taking becomes the center of a conflict between right-wing radicals, demonstrators and the media. 

EMPFÄNGER UNBEKANNT
PHoto: Bert Schmidt 

Germany’s reckoning with its past: A view from the outside 

Sohrab Shahid Saless is considered one of the leading Iranian filmmakers. He left his home country in 1974 and continued his work in exile in West Germany. In the late 1970s, his films began to reflect on Germany’s approach to its Nazi past. Saless would have been 80 years old on June 28, 2024. To mark this occasion, the 41st MUNICH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL is screening three of the filmmaker’s works in a tribute to him. In ORDER (1980), Saless addresses the lethargy that prevailed in German society in coming to terms with National Socialism. When the protagonist, a patient at a psychiatric ward, suddenly shouts “Auschwitz!” the staff sedates him. ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN (1983) draws parallels between the discrimination and persecution of the Jewish population that began in 1933 and the way that most of society treated migrants during the recession of the early 1980s. HANS - A YOUNG MAN IN GERMANY (1985) is based on motifs from the autobiographical novel “Die blaue Stunde” by the writer Hans Frick. The film shows a young man, whose father is Jewish, in Frankfurt during and after the Nazi era. Hans, as the protagonist is called, stoically stands up to a hostile, anti-Semitic environment.

FORTRESS MARIUPOL. LAST DAY AT AZOVSTAL

Defending democratic values: Focus on Ukraine 

This year, the MUNICH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL is focusing on current filmmaking in Ukraine. Three sets of films curated by filmmakers Mila Zhluktenko and Daniel Asadi Faezi in collaboration with the Ukrainian film collective Babylon’13 illustrate a necessity for people to deal with the war individually and collectively. 

The protagonists are soldiers and first responders on the front line. People on the run and artists who use their skills for the survival of their nation. Although some of the films show unembellished images of the reality of war - whether through documentary footage or fictional treatment - they avoid pure depictions of powerlessness. Instead, they focus on the artistic and practical resistance against the Russian occupation in Mariupol, Kyiv, near Bakhmut or in the northern border regions.

This special program was made possible through the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation in the context of the “European Renaissance of Ukraine” and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation For Freedom / Thomas Dehler Foundation. The Focus on Ukraine will also receive attention at the Beergarden Convention during the MUNICH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. Five Ukrainian projects in development will be pitched to an audience of professionals at the Amerikahaus on July 1, 2024. You can find out more about the event in the Beergarden Convention Guide.