From 10-17 April 2014 we, that is Josefin Riethausen (class 9/1), Lara Steinbrecher (class 9/3) and our teacher Karin Freund, visited a partner festival of SCHLINGEL, namely the International Film Festival «Ciné Jeune de l‘Aisne», which was held in the city of Saint-Quentin, located in the North of France.

Josefin and I were members of the International Jury, together with 12 teenagers from Italy, Croatia, Greece, France and Germany. From Friday to Monday we saw eight feature films and one documentary and afterwards discussed the films in French or English respectively. Our jury was supposed to determine the winner of the main prize, the “Grand Prix”, worth 5,000 Euros.
Together with our teacher Ms. Freund, Josefine and I visited a French college, where we talked about Chemnitz, SCHLINGEL and the Andrégymnasium, the school we go to in Germany. The French students showed us their school and asked a lot of questions. Of course, we had been excited whether our knowledge of the French language would be sufficient enough but fortunately everything worked out well.

All jury members rehearsed a speech for the festive awarding ceremony at the last day of the festival. As the winner film we awarded KISS ME YOU FUCKING MORON. Our festival week ended with a small celebration. Together with actors, directors, other jury members, the organizers of the festival and not to forget our host families, we spent a cheerful last evening.

During our week in Saint-Quentin, we gained a lot of experience. Definitely the biggest challenge for us was to talk to our (only French and very fast speaking) host families. It was very interesting to get an insight into the everyday life of a French family and to get to know their habits and attitudes. And what is best … we made new international friends. Our special thanks go to our teacher Ms. Freund and the organisers of SCHLINGEL and Ciné Jeune, without whom this trip would have been impossible.