Press Release #7/22

Festival Resume 2022

 
03.05.2022 // For six days, Austria's third-largest film festival - after the Viennale and Diagonale festivals - presented cinemagoers with new perspectives from all over Europe. The program offered 148 hand-picked feature films and documentaries from more than 30 countries, with current socio-political but also artistic and eccentric works, highlights of the festival season and regional filmmaking.

This year's festival provided current insights into European realities, negotiated topics that concern Europe and highlighted problems that need to be tackled and overcome. The aim of this year's festival was to reflect on Europe as a democratic, diverse, open and solidary place, also far beyond the EU borders - with the hope that the European peace project can regain momentum and, in particular, that the war in Ukraine will come to an end.

After what felt like a very long Corona winter, the comeback of the Crossing Europe festival spirit was felt throughout the inner city of Linz. The social space of cinema was bustling, as was all too rarely the case in the past months. In addition to emotional cinematic experiences, the presence of numerous film guests from Austria and abroad ensured that the exchange between audiences and filmmakers was at the heart of the festival - both in the cinema and after the screenings in the relaxed ambience of the festival district around OK-Platz. Fortunately, the festival audience accepted the invitation to travel across Europe on the cinema screen in large numbers. In the past six days, almost 15,000 festival visitors were counted at 155 film screenings and numerous supporting programs (talks, workshops, Nightline, etc.). During this year's Awards Ceremony, the juries awarded cash and non-cash prizes with a total value of around € 26,500, the list of award winners can be found HERE.

It should also be noted that ten selected films from the 2022 festival program will be available on the domestic streaming platform Kino VOD Club until June 2.

To sum up, it can be said that for six days the festival was very well received by the public, and the media coverage and feedback from guests, partners and sponsors was almost exclusively positive, which can be seen as a testament to the work of the CROSSING EUROPE team under the new festival directors Sabine Gebetsroither and Katharina Riedler.

For 2023 an anniversary is coming up, the audience can look forward to the 20th edition of CROSSING EUROPE Film Festival Linz at the end of April 2023.
Comprehensive press release HERE: