Exciting, promising and young - The festival of newcomers

We discover young talents - new film directors who are at the beginning of their career and who are highly talented. Newcomers - for us this means: directors who at best made themselves a name in their own country but who are internationally unknown. Young cinema authors who deserve discovery. We present a rigorous selection, strictly reserved to quality - without compromises. Our films are genuine premieres. We do not screen any films which have already been seen at other big festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno or at any German festival - not a single one. And the selection process is a radical one: these have to be really outstanding new arthouse films by newcomer-directors. Even here we do not make compromises. We manage to present some 40 new feature films (mainly fiction films (75%) but also cinematographically interesting documentaries and short films) - films which are to a large extent unknown to the international film industry.
Radical and brave selection

Each year we comb very carefully - and it is quite a large comb - through the entire new production of arthouse films by newcomers. Some 2,500 of these films are viewed and judged by our scouts and staff, numerous tips are gathered, resulting in an overview that an individual film buyer, for example, cannot acquire or organise due to restrictions of both time and human resources. In a very careful final selection we then choose, from a pool of some 700 feature films, those 35 to 40 films that we present to you - in the"International Competition"and in the"International Discoveries"programme.