REGIONAL SPECIAL PROGRAMS 2024

New in 2024: on Sunday, 13 October, Provinziale takes a step sidewards and abandons its usual schedule for a special regional programme.

Festival Sunday starts with an afternoon of youth cinema. Supported by the East German Sparkasse Foundation and Sparkasse Barnim, SEHquenz e.V. shows selected works from the FILMKNACK youth cinema project and by other young filmmakers based in the state of Brandenburg, such as the bilderbewegen e.V. association from the Uckermark region, Medienwerkstatt Potsdam and the Altranft Oderbruch Museum.

A project by

Supported by

Director: Felix Karolus, DE 2024, 89 min, German.

Sara, a Polish student, is found dead in a canoe near the Niederfinow ship lift. Police inspectors Vincent Ross and Karl Rogov start investigating in her private and academic environment, supported by water police officer Gunde Johannsen. Her master’s thesis comes into focus: has she found out something delicate in her research?

The script was written by Seraina Nyikos, Lucas Flasch, Mike Bäuml and Felix Karolus, who also acted as director. The film was shot from 10 April to 14 May 2024 at Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, the Niederfinow ship lift and the port. Filming locations also included Hohensaaten, Potsdam and Berlin.

The film was produced by DOKFILM (Frank Schmuck and Juliane Mieke) by commission of ARD Degeto Film and the Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb) broadcasting company for ARD, with Daria Moheb Zandi (rbb) and Birgit Titze (ARD Degeto Film) as editors.

After the screening, there will be a film talk and reception at the festival bar. The event was organised in cooperation between rbb Broadcasting and Initiative Filmland Brandenburg.

DOCUMENTARY by Rand Beiruti, Germany, Jordan, Saudi Arabia 2024, 92 min, Arabic, German and English. German subtitles. Suitable for all ages.

The day finishes with the documentary ÜBER UNS VON UNS – TELL THEM ABOUT US on occasion of its cinema release. The film, also set in Eberswalde, shows the stories and dreams of young girls and women from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan and how they hit reality.

ÜBER UNS VON UNS accompanies seven teenage girls on their way to adulthood in Eberswalde, an East German province town 55 km from Berlin. Being new to the town, the girls not only have to master the typical challenges of teenage life, such as friendship, school and self-discovery, but must also adapt to a new culture and environment and face their identities as immigrants and refugees.
Their experiences of displacement, cultural adaptation and the pressure to assimilate make for a dense network of storytelling. While shooting their everyday lives, the film director also conducted workshops where the girls had a chance to explore their hopes, dreams and fears by writing, music and acting and then write scenes to be played by themselves in front of the camera. The film converts these into dream sequences depicting the girls’ images of their future, with the goal of coping with their experiences and playfully turning them into perspectives.