Filmfest Hamburg starts with Helen Mirren and more than 200 performances

Film fans can look forward to a festival with more than 200 screenings in five Hamburg cinemas: On September 24th, the Hamburg Film Festival will be entering its 34th round. 114 films from 64 countries will be shown until October 3rd - including a star line-up on the red carpet. “We don’t just bring films, we also bring great guests,” said festival director Malika Rabahallah at the presentation of the program in the Cinemaxx cinema at Dammtor. The list of well-known actresses and actors is correspondingly long.

Helen Mirren comes to the film festival

The absolute star guest at this year's festival is the British actress and Oscar winner Helen Mirren. The 81-year-old will come to Hamburg on September 29th to personally accept the film festival's Douglas Sirk Prize. The actress is being honored for her contributions to film culture and the film industry. «And she also brings us a fantastic film by Anton Corbijn, who was also in Hamburg. "A talent for murder". She plays Patricia Highsmith fantastically.” The new film will be shown immediately after the awards ceremony.

There will also be seven world premieres as part of the festival. These include the films “Children of the Sun” by director Leonie Krippendorff, “Biermann” and “The Great Collapse”. These films - like most others - are shown in the presence of the filmmakers and actors. Among others, Jella Haase, Lena Urzendowsky, Thorsten Merten, Hanna Schygulla, Wim Wenders, Doris Dörrie and Wolf Biermann are expected on the red carpet.

A well-known film festival face cannot be missed this year: Hamburger Fatih Akin will present his new film “Ghosts” at the film festival.

The 34th Hamburg Film Festival has not just one focus, but several, as the festival director said. «We simply let ourselves be inspired by the films. We discuss, we invite and then we realize: "Oh, three themes have emerged this year."» This is freedom, connection and new beginnings.

Opening film from Poland and a film festival for children

The festival opens with the film “The Idiot(s)” by the Polish filmmaker Małgorzata Szumowska and her long-time artistic partner Michał Englert. The final film is the tragic comedy “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!” by Josef Kubota Wladyka.

At the same time as the film festival for the adults, there is also the junior section. The Hamburg Junior Film Festival starts one day later and things get busy: the opening film is “Shaun the Sheep – The Haunted Pumpkin Field”. Eight feature-length films and short films for children aged four and over will be shown until October 3rd.

There will be numerous school and kindergarten demonstrations, as Rabahallah said. “We wanted to show that our young audience naturally belongs to the Hamburg Film Festival. (...) If they come to the cinema today, they are also the cinemagoers of tomorrow.”