Media Response 2011

(selection)
 
Uniquely cinephile – Next to the giant tankers of Berlin, Cannes and Venice, next to the heavy steamers like the various city festivals, “Crossing Europe” in Linz seems like a small, agile cruiser. The festival, focusing on all the facets of European cinema, has continuously evolved over the past seven years into a special, genuinely cinephilic cinema festival. Every film in the clear, but complex and carefully curated program has its significance. Ideal conditions for discovering films, noting tendencies in European cinema.
Süddeutsche Zeitung (Hans Schifferle // 21./22.04.2011)
 
Perhaps it is possible to gain an “overview of contemporary European cinema” at Crossing Europe. My festival experience is not reflected in a formulation like this; nor my expectations of the festival. Perhaps European cinema is no longer an entirety at all (which then ultimately has to be held together “culturally” one way or another), of which the contours could be traced. Perhaps it is more a purely geographically determined quantity of national cinematographies, the single elements of which are sometimes more, sometimes less in demand in the festival economy.
cargo-film.de (Lukas Foerster // 18.04.2011)
 
CROSSING EUROPE – so congenial and ensures growing popularity among the audience. In any case, again I can hardly wait for the 2012 edition.
Deadline – Das Filmmagazin (Florian Widegger // edition 3/2011)
 
Again and again, Crossing Europe manages to hide gems in its program, so that we can find them and are later often met with disbelief at what unsettling films we recommend again. The Panorama is indeed expansive.
schnitt.de (Christian Lailach // 15.04.2011)
 
Meandering and fraying, inconsistent, contradictory and really quite sexy is how European cinema presents itself at the eighth Crossing Europe Film Festival. Within the framework of the six days of the festival, the European cultural region with its imagined and actual communities produces a grit of dreamlike realities. Festival Director Christine Dollhofer is aware that for a festival like hers, winding its way along geographical demarcations, there cannot and should not be any homogeneous superstructure; that European means, in the best case, multiple sensibilities drawing from regional circumstances.
fm4.ORF.at (Markus Keuschnigg // 14.04.2011)
 
The Crossing Europe Film Festival occasionally still suffers from the favored socially relevant themes, but here in Linz it is actually still possible to discover treasures that have been overlooked in predatory film-festivalism, which come from nowhere and prove in only a few hours how rich, contradictory, mad, original and visionary European cinema can and must be.
fm4.ORF.at (Markus Keuschnigg // 14.04.2011)
 
The sheriff with the red star. Where Winnetou’s East German blood-brother lives: the Linz film festival Crossing Europe shows Soviet and Eastern European “Red Westerns”.
The Gap (Dominique Gromes // April 2011)
 
Crossing Europe Film Festival enables an encounter between the audience and filmmakers.
Kirchenzeitung (Markus Vorauer // April 2011)
 
Particularly the joy of discovery – whether in historical or contemporary programs – makes Crossing Europe one of the best networked festivals: for the first time this year there is a special Festival-TV, a conference of international experts, “remote stations” in the Architecture Forum, the Chamber of Labor, Galerie Maerz and Salzamt.
Kronen Zeitung Oberösterreich (Milli Hornegger // 01.04.2011)
 
Crossing Europe 2011: cinema outside the mainstream – the Competition of the eighth edition of “Crossing Europe”, which registered a new visitor record with 19000 admissions in five days, may not entirely have reached the level of recent years. Yet the predicate “hand-picked” films is something that Linz can certainly still claim, because instead of Euro-pudding, idiosyncratic cinema was definitely to be seen. Nevertheless, the fact that Lluis Galter’s “Caracremada”, by far the most radical film in the competition, together with Pia Marais’ “At Ellen’s Age”, was awarded the main prize with a total of 10,000 Euro in prize money was still surprising.
kultur-online.net (Walter Gasperi // 18.04.2011)
 
Wild East and weeping vampires. Russian westerns, weeping vampires and migration cinema: films that are otherwise not to be seen in Austria are on the program in Linz starting today, Tuesday.
Kurier (Veronika Franz // 12.04.2011)
 
But since the Linz international film festival is devoted to the broad field of European cinema, the opening day focused attention not only in one direction, but instead with four films virtually opened up four channels into the individual program focal points, leading into a funnel-shaped expansion. This is only one of the many clever ideas in this carefully curated festival, which offers insights into filmmaking that unfortunately far too rarely finds its way into regular cinemas.
kurier.at (Peter Temel // 18.04.2011)
 
Christine Dollhofer has again managed to arrange a festival studded with manifold program points. Again and again, she ensures that curiosity does not fade, that the spark of a spirit of discovery – in terms of fresh European film – ignites the audience every year. There are some festivals in our region that could certainly benefit from being inspired and animated by Dollhofer’s fabulous spirit.
Neues Volksblatt (Philipp Wagenhofer // 16.04.2011)
 
For years Linz has been writing film history with Crossing Europe.
Oberösterreichische Nachrichten (08.04.2011)
 
Crossing Europe has surpassed itself.
Oberösterreichische Nachrichten (18.04.2011)
 
Linz as an international film metropolis, which seemed unimaginable eight years ago, has become reality today thanks to Crossing Europe.
ORF Radio Oberösterreich-Kulturjournal (14.04.2011)
 
In Linz: what is sadly not shown in the cinema. – “Crossing Europe”. The Linz festival presented a venturesome program: films that are sadly missing from conventional cinemas. “Crossing Europe” has established itself as a local film event and an enrichment of the Upper Austrian cultural landscape.
Die Presse (Christoph Huber // 16.04.2011)
 
Experimental and in tune with the heartbeat of the times.
Raiffeisenzeitung (Eva Pakisch // 21.04.2011)
 
Condense, concentrate, slow down, calm down. Finally no longer at the mercy of the hectic business of today. Not having to immediately form an opinion on everything. Thinking it over in peace to begin with. Anyone who wants that should go to Linz for Crossing Europe. On the one hand, because the organizers of the festival know how to create an atmosphere that is both relaxed and stimulating at the same time. On the other, because films are shown there that take their time with the determining of their contemporaneity. Films that argue subtly, which require an audience that is neither torpid nor nervous. And which find an audience like that in Linz.
ray FILMMAGAZIN (Alexandra Seitz // 05/2011)
 
Europe on the Danube. For five days Linz again becomes the European capital of cinema.
Salzburger Nachrichten (Magdalena Miedl // 12.04.2011)
 
Adventurers of cinema – from newcomers to historical heroes: the festival Crossing Europe opens four-fold and presents 160 films until 17 April.
Der Standard (Isabella Reicher // 12.04.2011)
 
The Linz film festival has meanwhile proved itself as one of the absolute highlights of the local film festival landscape. It is definitely worth taking a trip to the steel city.
TBA Die Musikzeitung (Andreas Kössl // April 2011)
 
A complete success – As a film festival Crossing Europe is exceptionally outstanding in Austria. It is smaller than the Viennale, thus more family-like and comprehensible. It is not at all as Austrian as the Diagonale. Filmmakers like CE as much as visitors and industry guests do. Because: Crossing Europe has a highly presentable program in the field of feature films as well as documentaries, and from the minimalist drama in the Competition to enjoyable humor in the series “Night Sight”, it offers simply everything.
tele.at (Julia Pühringer // 18.04.2011)
 
Insights into Europe’s wide-ranging reality.
Wiener Zeitung (Anton Silhan // 07.04.2011)