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Kustendorf 2024 – Call for Films

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The 17th edition of Kustendorf International Film and Music Festival will take place 23-27 January 2024 in Drvengrad, Mokra Gora. Kustendorf invites filmmakers from around the world to submit their short films for the Competition Programme of the upcoming festival. Selected films will be screened at the festival with their authors invited to take part in the festival programmes and compete for the festival awards.

Kustendorf, an internationally renowned festival, was established in 2008 with the idea to bring together the icons of contemporary auteur cinema and emerging filmmakers. The Competition Programme of the festival is devoted to showcasing short films, with additional programs that include screenings of contemporary feature films, retrospectives of cinematic luminaries, workshops, exhibitions and concerts. The founder of the festival is film director Emir Kusturica. Festival is organized by Rasta International production house.

Guidelines for submitting:

Narrative, documentary, animated and experimental films that have a running time not exceeding 40 minutes are welcomed. All films in languages other than English should have English subtitles. Please note that it is essential to submit an online screening link of your film (on a platform such as Vimeo, etc.). We do not accept physical media. Submissions are free. Deadline for submitting is 1 December 2023.

To submit your film, please fill in the application form available at this link.

Be sure to include a screening link, password (if necessary), three stills from the film and director’s portrait photo.

Send your application to kustendorffestival@gmail.com

 

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Kustendorf 2023 Awards: Jury Decisions

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Golden Egg

With inventive visual imagery, and clever storytelling, the film Letter to a Pig leads the viewer through the consciousness of a young schoolgirl – as a means of processing and deconstructing the trauma of the unimaginable. Leaving the audience with a deeper sense of human compassion. For this extraordinary achievement we award director Tal Kantor with the Golden Egg Award.

Silver Egg

Utilizing a masterful array of skills, the director of Snow in September confidently presents a gentle story of the turmoil facing a teenage Relationship, capturing those elusive moments of emotion that resonate strongly long after the film ends. The Jury would like to award the silver Egg to Dulmaa Purev-Ochir for her cinematic achievements.

Bronze Egg

With bold choices both in screenwriting and mise-en-scene, The film Affricate cleverly centers around an over-protective Mother, wonderfully performed by the lead actress. The surprising twists of plot lead to a sense of freedom often lacking in the constraints of life. The Jury wishes to award the Bronze Egg to Anna Gyimesi.

Special Mention of the Jury

Special Mention of the Jury would like to commend the director Of More than Living, Aleksandra Lazarovski, for guiding a well cast ensemble of actors to tenderly depict the subtle intricacies of personal conflict the characters face.

Vinko Filač Award

Among many quite professionally shot films where film photography is an integral part of the narrative itself, in this year’s selection there were a few outstanding films in the way of visual methods used to tell the film story. As the dominant media line of each film, which is in its core polymedia art, film photography which, when it is extraordinary, has the power to transform a piece of cinema into an extremely visual narrative. The Vinko Filač award jury has decided to give this award to the film which mostly communicates with the audience through the film photography and extraordinary use of camera. For the authors of the film On Xerxes Throne and above all for the director of photography of this remarkable film, the jury has decided to give the Vinko Filač award to Evan Maragkoudakis.

 

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Competition Programme Selection

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We are pleased to announce Kustendorf 2023 Competition Programme selection:

Affricate, Anna Gyimesi, Hungary
Attention All Passengers, Marek Moučka, Slovakia
Breeze, Hamidreza Ghasemi, Iran
Cassette, Temur Murotov, Uzbekistan
Electric Boogie, Valeria Kuznetsova, Russia
Fitness Jim, Ognjen Isailović, Serbia
Lamblike, Jovan Dimoski, Serbia
Letter to a Pig, Tal Kantor, Israel
More Than Living, Aleksandra Lazarovski, Serbia
Motherland, Hila Elena Royzenman, Israel
On Xerxes’ Throne, Evi Kalogiropoulou, Greece
Rites, Damián Vondrášek, Czech Republic
Snow in September, Dulmaa Purev-Ochir, Mongolia
Talponi, Vanja Victor Kabir Tognola, Switzerland 

We wish to take the opportunity to thank all the authors who submitted their films. After seeing 374 short films submitted for the upcoming Kustendorf, we believe that fourteen films selected for the Competition Programme stand out by their qualities and represent the diversity of approaches within the pool of submitted films. Sixteenth Kustendorf International Fim and Music festival will take place between 25 January and 29 January 2023 in Drvengrad, Serbia. Complete festival programme will be announced soon. Welcome to Kustendorf!

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Kustendorf 2023 – Call for Films

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The 16th edition of Kustendorf International Film and Music Festival will take place in January 2023 in Drvengrad, Mokra Gora. Kustendorf invites filmmakers from around the world to submit their short films for the Competition Programme of the upcoming festival. Selected films will be screened at the festival with their authors invited to take part in the festival programmes and compete for the festival awards.

Kustendorf is an international festival established in 2008 with the idea to bring together the icons of contemporary author’s cinema and upcoming filmmakers. The Competition Programme of the festival is devoted to showcasing short films, with additional programs that include screenings of contemporary feature films, retrospectives of cinema greats, workshops, exhibitions and concerts. The founder of the festival is film director Emir Kusturica. Festival is organized by Rasta Interational production house.

Guidelines for submitting:

Narrative, documentary, animated and experimental films that have a running time not exceeding 40 minutes are welcomed. All films in languages other than English should have English subtitles. Please note that it is essential to submit an online screening link of your film (on a platform such as Vimeo, etc.). We do not accept physical media. Submissions are free. Deadline for submitting is 1 December 2022.

To submit your film, please fill in the application form available at this link.

Be sure to include screening link, password (if necessary), three stills from the film and director’s portrait photo.

Send your application to kustendorffestival@gmail.com

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Awards of the Fifteenth Kustendorf Handed

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The 15th Kustendorf International Film and Music Festival Kustendorf has ended with the awards and closing ceremony in The Damned Yard Theatre. The official Kustendorf awards were handed to the winners as decided by the jury.

Veronica Echegui received special mention for Totem Loba, for delivering a powerful story in a very mature cinematic language. 

The winner of this year’s Vilko Filač award for best cinematography is Pablo Serret de Ena, for the film Useless Opera Singers that he also directed. The award was decided by Ivan Šijak, who also announced it, saying: The author of this film takes the audience on a philosophical journey through his camera work, which makes his film stand out from the rest. 

Bronze Egg Award was then given to Vanja Victor Kabir Tognola for Danzamatta. Mariam Abu Ouf announced the decision, saying that the film was awarded for being able to effectively tell an impactful story in five minutes. Out of the many beautiful films we enjoyed in this festival, this film stood out as the one that stuck most successfully to the short film format while leaving us to think about it with a big smile.

Silver Egg Award went to Jannis Alexander Kiefer for Good German Work/Colleagues. Brigitta Portier handed the award, describitng the film as the one that  tells a story subtly and takes the audience on an unprecedented journey while gradually revealing different aspects of the whole picture that leaves a huge impact. Also for succeeding in making us laugh about one of the most sensitive political and human issues in history.

The main award, the Golden Egg, was given to Igor Tzoy and Andrey Zamoskovny, co-directors of Clear Sky. Dušan Milić announced the award, saying: Every aspect of this film was perfect. The story, the camera work and the acting all worked together to form this nostalgic yet sarcastic piece of art. 

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Kustendorf 2022 Schedule

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Festival schedule is here.

 

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Kustendorf 2022 Postponed

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As we were gearing up for the 15th edition of Kustendorf International Film and Music festival, scheduled as an in-person event for later this month, the latest surge of COVID-19 infection and it’s highly transmissible Omicron variant forced us to change our plans. As our festival is focused on the gathering of filmmakers from the global community, and depends on direct encounters between the artists, audiences and festival goers, we have decided to postpone the upcoming festival until a later date. It was a tough decision to make, but we feel it would not be safe to gather hundreds of filmmakers, artists, employees, volunteers, friends and cinephiles, with the epidemiological situation and the rise of the number of infected people, both in Serbia and globally. Also, the ever-changing traveling and quarantine rules and regulations in different countries were seriously preventing us from organising Kustendorf 2022 as an event we envisioned. We believe that the situation will improve and plan to organize Kustendorf 2022 with the planned line-up in May. We’re sorry for the inconvenience caused, but we believe that this decision is the best possible one, both for the safety of our guests and for maintaining the spirit of Kustendorf festival as intimate and in-person event.

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Competition Programme Selection

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We are pleased to announce Kustendorf 2022 Competition Programme selection:

Carmela, Alfonso Villanueva Garcia, Fabiola Villanueva Bernal, Spain
Clear Sky, Igor Tsoy & Andrey Zamoskovny, Russia
Danzamatta, Vanja Victor Kabir Tongola, Switzerland
Elephant in the Mall, Ziv Mamon, Israel
Good German Work / Colleagues, Jannis Alexander Kiefer, Germany
How I Beat Glue and Bronze, Vladimir Vulević, Serbia, Germany
In Shallow Water, Marek Mouchka, Slovakia
Love stories on the move, Carina-Gabriela Dașoveanu, Romania
North Pole, Marija Apčevska, Serbia, North Macedonia
Real News, Luka Popadić, Switzerland, Serbia
Terminal Happiness, Eric Romero, Portugal, Estonia, United Kingdom
The Ceremony, Tadeusz Kabicz, Poland
Tótem Loba (She Wolf Totem), Verónica Echegui, Spain
Useless Opera Singers, Pablo Serret De Ena, Denmark
We’re Not Animals, Noé Debré, France

We wish to take the opportunity to thank all the authors and distributors who submitted their films. After seeing 522 films submitted for the upcoming Kustendorf, we believe that fifteen films selected for the Competition Programme represent the trends within the recent short film production well and at the same time stand out by the authenticity of their authors visions and filmmaking skills displayed.  Competition Programme will be screened between Saturday 22 January and Wednesday 26 January 2022, along with the other festival programs, in Drvengrad in Mokra Gora, Serbia. Film directors competing for the awards of Kustendorf 2022 are invited for the festival. 

 

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Submit your film for Kustendorf 2022

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Kustendorf International Film Festival Competition Programme is dedicated to showcasing short films. Submissions for Competition programme at Kustendorf 2022 are now open. We are looking for narrative, documentary, animated or experimental films under 45 minutes.

Submit your film by filling out the application form. Please include streaming/download links for the film, director’s portrait and film stills. Send it all to kustendorffestival@gmail.com not later than 1 December 2021.

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Awards of the Fourteenth Kustendorf Handed

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The final day of the Fourteenth Kustendorf International Film and Music Festival wrapped up with a closing ceremony held at the Stanley Kubrick theatre in Mećavnik.

Members of the jury joined professor Emir Kusturica in a teleconference, to present the Festival awards – Golden, Silver and Bronze Eggs and the Vilko Filač Award for Cinematography.

Miki Manojlović, Alice Rohrwacher and Bruno Tarrière have unanimously decided to award not one but two film authors. The Golden Egg goes to both Özgür Anil for The Verdict in the Case of K and Inbar Horesh for Birth Right.  The names of the prize winners were announced by Miki Manojlović: It wasn’t easy to make decisisions but we made it unanimously. Our decision is to award two films that are in our opinion the best. They have stories, nice stories, they are directed, filmed, edited and acted very well. We think that 22 young directors, filmmakers, and crews that made 22 movies are all very talented. Directors of these films will, we hope, become great directors in the near future!

The Silver Egg Award went to the film Rain directed by Piotr Milczarek from Poland. Bruno Tarrière announced the decision, saying: We all loved this short film, only five minutes long, that created such a vertiginous emotion, using both humor and beautiful mastery of drawing and sound. With its universal language it stimulates the imagination and reflexion. You can see this film once, think about the problems of the society, and see it again on another day and think completely the other way.

 The Bronze Egg went to Ana Aleksovska from North Macedonia for Consuming Contemporary. Alice Rohrwacher announced the recepient, saying: This award goes to film that talks about art and hunger. The director presented us with an unforgettable character, with a lot of tenderness, joy… (While watching) this movie we thought she is a a beautiful human being and I think it is always important to remember the connection between human beings and good directors, good movies. You can feel the relation between the director and the character.

 FThe Vilko Filač Award for Cinematography went to Cesary Stolecki for Home sweet home directed by Agata Puszcz from Poland. The award was announced by Michel Amathieu: I was impressed by the strong direction and very precise lighting that is very esthetical and it pictures well what director wants to say.

Jury has also decided to award a Special Mention to Baizak Mamataliyev’s On the Boat. The award was announced by Alice Rohrwacher: Special award goes to the director who used very few elements, a river, a woman, a man and a baby, in a movie with a lot of humor and intensity. The movie is realistic, but also a parable. Even in fairy tales you know the end but you are happy to see it again and again.

See the winners in the photo gallery.