Fest 2003.

Goodbye Lenin won the hearts of the critics at the International Film Festival FEST 2003. The fall of the Berlin Wall must have brought relief to some and confusion to others. German critics all agree: Goodbye Lenin is the first good film made on the subject in 13 years. Its director defines it as a melancholic comedy. Wolfgang Becker is indeed telling his story in a wonderful and touching way. The screenplay revolves around the story of a loving son who tries to move mountains and create a "pre-fall" world to restore his mother to a healthy state after she had wakened up from a coma that occurred before the fall. In order to protect his mother from any emotional shock, Alex creates a fake TV news program, Aktuelle Kamera, that his mother used to watch before the fall of the Berlin Wall and that stopped with it. With its comic manner, the film mocks the old East German communist lifestyle, without a trace of spite, bitterness, or malice. It is obvious that the director of this film still feels slightly sentimental about that old-fashioned life-style, nevertheless, he caricatures and ridicules the ideas of these disappeared times, of communist ideology. The director, Becker, was born in Hemer, Germany. He studied German history and literature at Berlin University. Only in the 80s did he study at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin, when he started his cinematographic career. Goodbye Lenin is certainly not a blockbuster. Goodbye Lenin, though a bitter sweet comedy, is for a thoughtful audience.

La vie Nouvelle is one powerful and uncompromising film as it searches the dark world of perversity. The film starts when a young woman is picked out of a group of war prisoners. The action then moves to Sofia, Bulgaria, where the same woman works as a prostitute in a strip-joint. A young American falls for the charms of the strip-singer. His infatuation becomes an obsession. He ends up following her in hotels, bars, and nightclubs, and witnesses the dark side of desire, lust, and sex. With an unusual dramatic structure, the movie revels in its claustrophobic music and atmosphere. The leading role of La vie Nouvelle is Anna Moungalis who already visited Belgrade's International Film Festival FEST two years ago. About the film, she said:

"This film is very hard to watch, but tries to communicate with the viewer's feelings. It is not just a story about a dentist who cheats on his wife, it is a beautiful film, charged with aesthetic emotion. It is almost mythological."

Philippe Grandrieux, the director, graduated from the Institut Superieur des Arts du Spectacle de Bruxelles. One of the documentary films he is known for was Retour a Sarajevo. La vie Nouvelle avoids sentimentality: not meant to engender any pity, it tries to unfold as a pure document.