Following the great success of last year’s Oberhausen International Short Film Festival Tour, in Cyprus, ARTos Foundation in collaboration with the Goethe Institut are proud to welcome the screening of the programs ‘Made in Germany 2: Inner City Life’ on the 4th of November and the ‘German Competition’ on the 5th of November at 19:30, at ARTos Foundation.

In the course of six decades, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen has developed into one of the most highly acclaimed cultural events worldwide – a place where renowned figures like Agnès Varda, Martin Scorsese, Alexander Kluge and Werner Herzog first showed their films. Oberhausen is the world’s oldest short film festival and in the meantime also enjoys an excellent standing in the art scene, where short films and videos play an increasingly important role today.

This programme with works from the 2018 German Competition centres on civil society, the globalised middle class and tourism. While Willy Hans, in calm black-and-white pictures but with subtle allusions to horror film, recounts how a small family with educated middle-class principles gradually falls apart, Yannick Spiess shows us the everyday routine and dedication to duty of a wealthy Swiss woman. In between, Nikita Diakur has dolls dance furiously in the courtyard of a prefab housing estate. In a free adaptation of Michel Houellebecq, “Beyond Beach” serenely imagines the lethargy and indifference of Western hedonists on Latin American beaches as a colourful daydream. In the work by Judith Hopf, a slender apartment tower trots out of the picture whenever things get too boring for it. And finally, in “Bigger Than Life”, the winner of the 3sat Promotional Award, music sets the tone of the film. It provides the playful structure for this survey of a chauvinist urban project that is intended to catapult Skopje up among the principal arenas of European history alongside Rome and Athens.

German Competition:

Beyond Beach
Clara Winter/Miguel Ferráez, Germany 2018 colour, English/Spanish with English subs, 14’

Die Tage / The Days
Yannick Spiess, Germany 2018 colour, German with English subs, 20‘

Fest
Nikita Diakur, Germany 2018 colour, no dialogue, 3‘

Das satanische Dickicht – DREI / The Satanic Thicket – THREE

Willy Hans, Germany 2017 colour and b/w, German with English subs, 21‘30“

Out
Judith Hopf, Germany 2018 colour, no dialogue, 2‘30

Bigger Than Life
Adnan Softić, Germany/Italy/Macedonia 2018, colour, English, 30‘

Running time 91’