Wiesbaden/Frankfurt, 16 April 2025
Introducing the Juries
goEast’s five-member International Jury awards a total of three prizes: the Golden Lily for Best Film (endowed with 10,000 euros in prize money), chosen from the 14 productions in the Main Competition; the Award of the City of Wiesbaden for Best Director (7,500 euros); and the goEast Documentary Film Award (1,000 euros). goEast is delighted to announce the chair of this year’s goEast International Competition Jury: multi-award-winning Bosnian director and screenwriter Jasmila Žbanić. Žbanić’s feature-film debut GRBAVICA, which deals with the consequences of sexualized violence during wartime in Bosnia, received the Golden Bear at the 2006 Berlinale and has been honoured with numerous other prizes. Her second film, ON THE PATH, which examines the effects of religious extremism on a relationship, was also screened in the Berlinale Competition. With QUO VADIS, AIDA?, which relates the tragedy of Srebrenica from the perspective of a UN translator, she was nominated for an Oscar in the Best International Film category and won the European Film Award. Žbanić works regularly with international co-productions and is known for her precise and moving depictions of post-conflict societies. She has been a special guest in Wiesbaden previously, as the subject of 2023’s Portrait section.
Kyiv-based filmmaker and writer Oleksiy Radynski blends documentary forms with political cinema in his work, which has been screened at festivals and exhibited around the world, including at the Berlinale, IFFR Rotterdam, Oberhausen, ICA London and the Taipei Biennale. His film CHORNOBYL 22, treating the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, was honoured with the Grand Prize of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. In 2024, he collaborated with artist Hito Steyerl on the installation “Leak. The end of the pipeline”. His essays and articles have appeared among other places in e-flux journal and TAZ, as well as in diverse anthologies, such as “Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe: A Critical Anthology (MoMA, 2018)”, published by New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Ola Staszel has been at the helm of Neiße Film Festival, situated in the shared border triangle between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, since 2014, and also serves as spokesperson for the Sorbian-German film network Łužycafilm. Staszel studied film studies, Polish philology and European studies at the University of Wrocław and the University of Aachen and has been a resident of Berlin since 1999. In addition, she founded and ran the festival for mobile cinema “The Rolling Movies” along the border between Germany and Poland.
French producer Louis Beaudemont lives in Paris and Kyiv and collaborates primarily with directors from Eastern Europe. He specialises in experimental and documentary formats. Together with Nicolai Iarochenko, he co-founded the production company LES STEPPES in 2019. Their films have been shown, among other places, at DOK Leipzig, the Berlinale, IFFR Rotterdam and Cinéma du Réel. In 2022, the experimental documentary film MARA (Belarus, France, directed by Sasha Kulak), which Louis Beaudemont produced, took part in the goEast Competition.
Dana Iskakova is an artist and cultural practitioner from Almaty, Kazakhstan, currently residing in Basel. In 2024, as part of the DAVRA research collective she was selected to participate in a residency in the scope of the Living Archive program at Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, where she pursued research on Central Asian film heritage and realised the film WHOSE VOICE IS THIS?. In 2023, in collaboration with the MATA collective she created If, a magazine for fictional contemporary art.
The International Federation of Film Critics FIPRESCI is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2025 and will be present in Wiesbaden with a masterclass with film critic, editor and festival director Dunja Bialas, a conversation with goEast founder and former DFF director Claudia Dillmann and, of course, with a three-member jury.
We begin our introduction of this year’s FIPRESCI Jury with Amsterdam-based film critic and curator Hugo Emmerzael. Emmerzael is the editor of Filmkrant and writes for Senses of Cinema, among other outlets. He has been a jury member for FIPRESCI in Cannes, Karlovy Vary and Venice. Joining him is Jenni Zylka, who lives in Berlin and reports on film and music for TAZ, the Tagesspiegel and Der Spiegel, as well as for radio and television (Deutschlandradio, ZDF). She curates the Series section at the Nordic Film Days in Lübeck and is head of the Industry & Meetings section at Filmfest Bremen. The third and final member of the jury is Slovenian-based film journalist, critic and festival curator Marko Stojiljković. Stojiljković writes for Cineuropa, Asian Movie Pulse, Eye for Film and diverse media outlets in former Yugoslavia, such as Pobjeda, Croatian public radio and Dialogi. In addition, he is a co-founder of Ubiquarian, an English-language platform for short and documentary films, where he also contributes as a critic.
The RhineMain Short Film Award Jury consists as usual of three jury members active in the film sector in the Rhine-Main region. Laliv Melamed is a professor for digital film cultures at Frankfurt’s Goethe University. Her research is centred on documentary films and media with a focus on the Middle East. Melamed is a programming director at DocAviv Film Festival (Tel Aviv) and has curated film programs for the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and Artis. Antonia Kilian is a director, camerawoman and producer and lives in Kassel and Berlin. Her debut THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER won 18 awards, including the German Film Award and the Grimme-Preis. Rounding off this year’s jury is German-Iranian filmmaker Behrooz Karamizade, whose multi-award-winning debut film EMPTY NETS relates the story of a young couple in Iran suffering under economic pressure and social constraints. For his film, Behrooz Karamizade received the Hessian Film and Cinema Award as Best Newcomer, among other prizes. Behrooz is a co-founder of the film production company Living Pictures Production.
The East-West Talent Lab Jury also consists of three members. As an editor at Arte/ZDF, Miriam Carbe has worked in the current events department since 2011, supervising documentaries and reporting on political, social and historical topics, including involvement with the outlet’s “Generation Ukraine” series. As a film curator and cultural manager, Rabih El-Khoury has organised more than 20 Arab film weeks in the Middle East and Europe and has also been active as a program manager for “Talents Beirut”. Since September 2024, he has served as an advisor for the selection of the official program of the Berlinale. The jury is completed by internationally active screenwriter and screenplay consultant Monika Franczak of Poland, who has developed a multitude of projects, including feature films, television series, animated films and documentaries. Since 2022, she has served as Chair of the Board of B2B Doc, the Baltic to Black Sea Documentary Network, and is also an active member of the Polish Screenwriters Guild.
The goEast Press Breakfast
Festival Director Heleen Gerritsen presented the program of goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film to the press this morning, Wednesday, 16 April, in the DFF cinema. From Wednesday, 23 April, to Tuesday, 29 April, goEast is showing 86 films from 43 countries.
Following the Press Breakfast, the exhibition 25×25 was officially opened in the DFF foyer. 25 pictures from goEast festival history showcase brilliant figures from the Eastern European film scene, accompanied by their (often very impressive) filmographies. Alongside the exhibited photographs, through 15 May the multimedia installation Cinecube will feature excerpts from 25 goEast festival films drawn from the past years.
Christine Kopf, Artistic Director of DFF:
“With the founding of goEast over 25 years ago, we were building on the “Eastern European film series” organised by Deutsches Filminstitut which we had curated and sent out on tour throughout the Federal Republic of Germany well into the 1980s. Our aim was genuine cultural exchange, triggered and driven by that magical power to foster understanding that the collective experience of cinema possesses. Congratulations to Heleen Gerritsen for assembling an exceptionally bountiful anniversary program. I am delighted that our collaboration will not end here, but instead continue when she leaves the festival in May, as we fight together for the preservation of film heritage from our positions in Frankfurt and Berlin in the future – she as Artistic Director and member of the Board of Directors of Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, and myself in the same role for DFF. I’d like to extend a warm welcome to incoming goEast Director Rebecca Heiler.”
Heleen Gerritsen, who has been at the helm of goEast since 2017, explained: “The 25th edition of goEast offers highest-calibre Central and Eastern European cinema of the past, present and future within a single program. We are kicking off the anniversary edition with a brilliant silent film concert at Caligari FilmBühne. The Competition features 14 powerful contemporary productions that once again cover the full spectrum of genres and themes. Future projects will be presented in the scope of the East-West Talent Lab. In the special anniversary program too, which demonstrates above all the resilience of the Central and Eastern European film industry in addition to its creativity, we take a look both back and forward into the future. I am very happy that we are also represented in 2025 by an exhibition in the DFF foyer – which I had the pleasure of opening today following the press conference – where we look back on 25 years of goEast in a mix of photos and moving images.”
Christoph Degen, Hessian State Secretary for Science and Research, Arts and Culture, shared: “Especially in times of international tension, we need the unifying power of film culture, its ability to help us approach one another with understanding. With goEast Film Festival, DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum has been making a significant contribution in this regard for 25 years. It has transformed Wiesbaden into one of the most important venues for cinema from Central and Eastern Europe. As the Hessian State Ministry for Science and Research, Arts and Culture, we are happy to support this role.”
For Head of the Cultural Department of the State Capital Wiesbaden Dr. Hendrik Schmehl, goEast Film Festival possesses a special relevance: “With its ambitious and high-quality program, for 25 years goEast has enriched the cultural life of Wiesbaden and been a pillar of the festival scene in our city. This cinematic, social and political look beyond our local bubble to Central and Eastern Europe, with its associated discourse, is of great importance for Wiesbaden due to its historically close connection to this part of Europe. We are proud and happy that goEast calls Wiesbaden home.”
Dr. Susanne Völker, CEO of Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, which is generously supporting the innovative “Cinema Archipelago” program for the fourth year running, observed: “We are very happy to support goEast Film Festival. Cinema Archipelago represents an important focal point in this regard. Not only does it offer people, topics and groups with otherwise little to no visibility in the film industry a platform, it also immerses us in discourses and perspectives that typically correspond little to our normal everyday experience. We greatly appreciate goEast as a strong cultural position and major presence in the region for the impulses it often presents in new and experimental artistic forms and formats.”
More than 200 guests from the Central and Eastern European film industry are expected to attend the festival in Wiesbaden.
Program Highlights
Further festival sections include the Symposium, taking place this year under the title “Omas, Babas, Babushkas – Gender & Ageing in European Cinema”. Curated by Boglárka Angéla Farkas, Asja Makarević and Andrea Virginás, in the scope of six lectures and panel discussions this year’s edition examines the depiction of female ageing in Eastern European cinema, as well as the role of older women in the film industry. The Symposium program features screenings of 14 feature-length films and three shorter works as supporting films.
The goEast Matinee on Sunday, 27 April, at Caligari FilmBühne features a screening of the silent film classic SUZY SAXOPHONE. For the eponymous lead role, Czech director Carl Lamač cast UFA screen icon Anny Ondra (born Anna Ondráková) in 1928. The screening will showcase a new digital restoration of the film realised by DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, with live musical accompaniment from Uwe Oberg (piano) and Ulrike Schwarz (saxophone/flute).
This year, the traditional Archive Presentation is devoted to the Czech Republic. Since 1943, the National Film Archive (Národní filmový archiv, NFA) has been one of the most important film heritage institutions while establishing itself as a significant research facility. Among the film heritage treasures on view in Wiesbaden: the freshly restored and digitized cult black comedy MURDERING THE DEVIL (VRAŽDA ING. ČERTA CSK 19170) by Ester Krumbachová. Inside an ornately furnished apartment, we become witnesses to a grotesque ritual: evening after evening, the cultivated yet lonely middle-aged female protagonist prepares elaborate meals for her girlhood crush, Mr. Devil, who gobbles it all up like a pig, while quoting Freud and Nietzsche to justify his chauvinism. The program also showcases Jaromil Jireš’ surreal short film THE KING GAME (HRA NA KRÁLE CSK 1967). This tension-filled experimental film is an artful mix of psycho-thriller tropes and in-depth analysis of power and manipulation. At the centre of the action: the Moravian-Slovak festival known as the Ride of Kings, whose symbolism reflects the powerlessness of the individual in the face of oppressive authoritarian systems. Rounding out the program, Karel Vachek’s satirical essay film MORAVIAN HELLAS (MORAVSKÁ HELLAS CSK 1964) exhibits a wide range: from Easter egg decorators to kitsch artists. Employing unconventional means (such as commentary texts, singing and fictional etudes), Vachek’s final student film is a humorous yet aggressive documentary essay.
Amaro Kino: Roma Shorts
From the festival’s earliest days, cinema from Romani filmmakers has occupied a space in the goEast program. AMARO KINO – A TRAVELING PROGRAM OF RECENT ROMA SHORT FILMS presents a selection of contemporary short films by Roma directors. The series brings fresh, creative perspectives to the screen. This program was assembled in collaboration with the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) and is being presented in partnership with the Eastern European Film Festival Network (EEFFN).
The endearingly maladjusted and unusual ANARCHO SHORTS are also back again. The goEast team has collectively assembled a wild selection of anarchic, idiosyncratic short films for the perennial favourite.
Yugoretten
It wouldn’t be a special anniversary edition without Mateja Meded, Boris Hadzija and the Balkan artists’ network Yugoretten – they’ll be enriching the goEast program for the third time this year. In their programs, the curators wrestle with questions of Yugoslav (and ex-Yugoslav) identity, along with their specially invited guests. Among other items, the program features a screening of Nataša Urban’s fast-paced essay film THE ECLIPSE (NOR 2022). In addition, during the festival week, the Yugoretten invite the festival audience to attend a panel entitled UNDER THE SUN, to take place in the Clubhouse at Altes Gericht, where they will talk with Jury president Jasmila Žbanić, Symposium curator Asja Makarević and director Nataša Urban.
Special Anniversary Program MEET THE EAST
What distinguishes the cinema of Central and Eastern Europe? Over the past 25 years, a period characterised by political, economic and cultural upheaval – a situation that has only gotten more intense in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine – it is striking how resilient the Eastern European film industry is. In 2025, goEast is celebrating its silver anniversary, of course, but above all the festival would like to celebrate the revolutionary spirit and admirable toughness of Eastern European filmmakers. It’s no accident in this context that goEast is showing Margarethe von Trotta‘s biopic ROSA LUXEMBURG (CSK, BRD 1986), on the life of the Polish-German revolutionary. In a subsequent Cinetalk with Urs Spörri, the director will speak about the film, feminism in the year 2025 and her personal relationships to Poland, among other topics. The program also includes a screening of Kateryna Gornostai’s remarkable documentary film TIMESTAMP (STRICHKA CHASU UKR, LUX, NLD, FRA 2025). The CINETALK will be conducted by producer Natalija Lilibet and Festival Director Heleen Gerritsen, who will converse about the making of TIMESTAMP, the challenges of making films in wartime and the role of cinema in times of uncertainty. Further films from Ukraine, Serbia and former Yugoslavia round off the special anniversary program.
goEast Parties
The goEast parties and the cosy bar in the Clubhouse in the Festival Centre provide a congenial, welcoming atmosphere and create the perfect mood for dancing. On Friday, 25 April, the UKRAINIAN BEATS Party will take place in the Kesselhaus at the Schlachthof cultural centre. DJ Janeck’s beats will be complemented by live performances from Naina Doroshenko, who combines traditional sounds and modern dance music with her voice and bandura, and DUDUNJA, who creates captivating soundscapes with djembe, panduri, synthesiser and guitar. At the GOEAST BIRTHDAY PARTY@ALTES GERICHT on Saturday, 26 April, Poland’s oldest DJane VIKA! and goEast resident DJ Janeck will be putting together a musical bouquet of groovy rhythms and banging sounds.
The goEast Clubhouse in the Festival Centre at Altes Gericht, the venue for panels, also represents a cosy spot where guests and attendees can close out the evening with a drink or two during the festival week.
On Wednesday, 23 April, at 18:30, goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film will celebrate its 25th opening at Caligari FilmBühne with a screening of the silent film CHEMIE BEBIA (My Grandmother, Georgian SSR 1929) from director Kote Mikaberidze with live accompaniment by the Finnish band CLEANING WOMEN.
Dramas, documentaries, comedies, satire and portraits from Eastern and Central Europe – the centrepiece of the festival, the Competition, will once again feature a wide variety of films. The Competition offers a broad audience from Wiesbaden and the region a chance to get to know the highlights of current Central and Eastern European cinema. The films will be shown in their original languages with English subtitles, and in Caligari FilmBühne with additional German subtitles. Festival attendees can enter into dialogue with the filmmakers at the film talks following each screening and every evening in the goEast Clubhouse at Altes Gericht.
The full program for the 25th edition of goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is now online.
You can find images related to the festival in our download section.
goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film is hosted by DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum and made possible with the support of numerous partners. Primary funding partners are HessenFilm und Medien GmbH, the State Capital Wiesbaden, Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Germany and the solidarity initiative of the German Catholics with the people in Central and Eastern Europe Renovabis. Primary media partners include 3sat, Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.