39th Munich Film Festival opens for 10-day celebration of movies

Under the slogan "Unleashed" the 39th Munich Film Festival opened Thursday evening at the Isarphilharmonie concert hall with the screening of the movie "Corsage" to kick off 10 days of screenings at indoor and outdoor venues around the Bavarian capital.

Several hundred screenings are scheduled at about a dozen indoor and outdoor venues around the city, with the fest to wrap up on July 2 with the awarding of the top prizes in several categories for both international and German film productions.

The main interest for many film fans will be focused on three competitions: the €50,000 ($52,300) CineMasters for best international film, which has 10 entries, the €15,000 CineVision for the best newcomer director, and a new prize, the €10,000 CineRebels.

This year's festival is to pay special tribute to two women. German director Doris Doerrie will be honoured with a retrospective show of her several decades of filmmaking, while the CineMerit lifetime achievement award will be presented to Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher.

With war going on in Ukraine, the Munich festival will also be screening films by Ukrainian and Russian directors focusing on issues of war, survival and totalitarianism.

Another topical theme concerns the 50th anniversary of the terrorism-stricken 1972 Munich Olympics, with a film "Champagne for the Eyes – Poison for the Rest" by German director Klaus Lemke depicting the lifestyle of Munich in the 1970s.

Regarding the terrorist attack on the Munich games, the Munich Film Festival and Bavarian broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk will be dedicating an entire evening to the theme directly after the festival in the open-air cinema located on the Olympic Lake.