On Monday, 15th of October, the International Film Festival for Children and Young Audience SCHLINGEL in Chemnitz will be opened by the South African production LUCKY. About 300 students from Chemnitz and surroundings, as well as invited guests from Germany and foreign countries will attend the official ceremony. From then on, 103 movies from 36 countries will be on the screens of the CineStar in the “Galerie Roter Turm” for over a week. Visitors can look forward to productions from Azerbaijan, New Zealand and South Africa. Furthermore, also national productions will be presented. 19 German and 1 International, as well as 2 world premiers are exclusively screened for the audience in Chemnitz. The mascot of the festival, Robin Weyreder, welcomes all the cineastes young and old in the cinema hall.

The movies are divided into the competition categories Children’s, Junior, Youth, Short and Animation Film as well as Focus Germany. 90 movies compete for the highly coveted SCHLINGEL-trophies, which will be presented on the 20th of October in the small hall of the city centre of Chemnitz. Additional to the competition there will be productions in the noncompetitive section Panorama; this year’s program focuses on the Czech Republic. Numerous film teams of the competitive films will travel to Chemnitz in order to answer questions of the audience after the film screenings.

During the festival week, altogether 10 Professional, Children’s and Youth Juries will be spoilt for choice when it comes to finding a winner in the particular categories. A total amount of 30.000 Euro will be awarded. The “European children’s film prize” that will be presented by the European Children’s Jury is unique. This jury consists of 18 children from nine different countries and this year celebrates its 10 anniversary. For the first time in its history, the Goethe-Institut will award a Youth and Children’s Film Price. They reward an especially aesthetic German Youth or Children’s Film from the national competition category “Focus Germany” that builds upon values such as freedom, tolerance and mutual understanding of cultures. The Goethe-Institute will acquire the license of the winning film, support the subtitling into at least five languages and screen it within its global network. The chairs of the Professional Jury Feature Film will be filled by, for instance, Griseldis Wenner, an anchorwoman of the German TV channel MDR.

One of the highlights will be the Presentation of the “SCHLINGEL Award of Distinction” on the 16th October to Gojko Mitic, who will be present himself to receive his award. Some of the guests expected are: actress Karin Düwel, director Rolf Losansky, director Václav Vorlícek as well as anchorwoman and member of the jury Griseldis Wenner.

An extensive media educational accompanying programme for kindergarten, school and after school centre will give the children an understanding of the medium film. During workshops they can learn more about film theory or they gain an insight into the production of movies, for instance the work with a blue screen or the writing of film reviews, as well as the artistic dealing with film contents.

You can purchase the tickets for 4 Euro at the cinema box office of the CineStar in the “Galerie Roter Turm” in Chemnitz, Neumarkt 2. Those entrance cards can be used as tickets for the local traffic of Verkehrsbund Mittelsachen as well. Organiser of the festival is the “Sächsischer Kinder- und Jugendfilmdienst e.V. Chemnitz“. Co-organiser is the Saxon State Agency for Private Broadcasting and New Media (SLM). Patron of the Festival is Stanislaw Tillich, Minister President of the Free State of Saxony.