FESTIVAL FILES Crossing Europe 2021
My thoughts on the most recent edition of the Crossing Europe film festival.
Courtesy of the pandemic, I’ve had the chance to attend some festivals from home that I have been unable to go to in person (Toronto, Rotterdam). I’ve also had the chance to attend certain events I’d never been to before, physically, despite the health crisis, as was the case with the Viennale last October. And now, again in Austria, I got to add another festival to my list, fully in person*, an experience I hope I get to relive next year under less stressful circumstances: Crossing Europe.
Headquartered in Linz, Upper Austria, the festival usually takes places between April and May, but had to reschedule to early June this year due to Covid restrictions, after canceling the 2020 edition altogether. It was one of the first events in the German-speaking realm to implement the so-called “three Gs” system: anyone wishing to attend had to be geimpft(fully vaccinated), genesen (recently tested positive and recovered) or getestet (negative antigen or PCR test, to be renewed every 48 or 72 hours). In my case, that meant getting tested three times over the six-day duration of the festival (June 1-6), and showing the result before each screening.
As the name suggests, the festival focuses on European film, and there are links across sections, be they thematic or stylistic. An idea that is perhaps best encompassed by this year’s Tribute section, focusing on the works of Slovak filmmaker Ivan Ostrochovsky, whose oeuvre blurs the line between fiction and documentary. His latest film Servants, fully fictional this time, was one of the five opening films this year (five major sections of the program get spotlighted on opening night).
It also served as a reminder of sorts of what kind of year it has been in terms of film distribution: as the 2020 edition didn’t take place, the 2021 program included titles that would most likely have played at last year’s festival if it had happened, being films that originally premiered at Venice in 2019 or the Berlinale in early 2020. Not that anyone was complaining: in fact, this gave many festivalgoers, myself included, the opportunity to catch up with some material that had made waves on the festival circuit but not reached certain territories yet, like the Romanian Oscar nominee Collective, a masterful portrait of journalism at its best.
I spent the better part of six days watching a fascinating blend of fiction, documentaries, youth-oriented material and genre fare, with the last of these playing in the Nachtsicht section. Being a horror/thriller/sci-fi buff, I particularly enjoyed attending those screenings, which ranged from a Swedish chamber piece psychological mystery (Knocking) to the latest from French horror maestros Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (Kandisha, based on a Moroccan legend that plays a bit like Candyman), culminating in the Satanic thriller Son – a film set in the US and starring Emile Hirsch as a police officer investigating a cult, but still European by virtue of being written and directed by Irish filmmaker Ivan Kavanagh.
After months of virtual screenings and events (with the partial exception of Visions du Réel, although I didn’t get to attend the part that was open to the general public), this felt like the first proper festival of the year, in terms of people celebrating the art of film together. There was a bit of melancholy involved (Christine Dollhofer, who founded the festival and served as its artistic director since the first edition, is stepping down after 18 years at the helm), but overall, the feeling was joyous. I’m already looking forward to next year.
*Austrian viewers who were unable to attend will be able to see some of the films via a dedicated VOD platform over the summer, but there were no online offerings during the actual festival week.