Russian filmmakers Aleksey German Jr, Lyubov Mulmenko and Ekaterina Selenkina have withdrawn their films – respectively, House Arrest [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], The Danube and Detours [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] – from the programme of the 22nd edition of the goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film, which is being held from 19-25 April in Wiesbaden and the Rhine-Main region. As a result, this year's Competition section will only feature 14 movies, and the missing titles will not be replaced by any others. In addition, the festival will be launching a panel where the Ukrainian participants will discuss the boycott of Russian cinema from a Ukrainian point of view, and explain their motives and aims.

Besides the opening film, Paweł Łoziński’s bold experiment The Balcony Movie [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Paweł Łoziński
scheda film], the centrepiece of the festival is the Competition section, through which goEast showcases highlights from contemporary Central and Eastern European cinema. This programme strand includes another Polish co-production, Aga Woszczyńska’s Silent Land [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Aga Woszczyńska
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intervista: Kaltrina Krasniqi
scheda film] by Kaltrina Krasniqi; the Hungarian bodybuilding drama Gentle [+leggi anche:
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intervista: László Csuja e Anna Nemes
scheda film] by László Csuja and Anna Nemes, which started its festival journey in competition at Sundance; the Armenian poetic documentary 5 Dreamers and a Horse [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Vahagn Khachatryan e Aren …
scheda film] by Vahagn Khachatryan and Aren Malakyan; the Lithuanian crime-thriller Pilgrims [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Laurynas Bareisa
scheda film] by Laurynas Bareiša; the Bulgarian absurdist winter tale January [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Andrey M Paounov; the documentary in defence of civil rights Cotton100% by Uzbek director Mikhail Borodin; and the refugee drama As Far as I Can Walk [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Stefan Arsenijević
scheda film] by Serbian director Stefan Arsenijević, which won the top prize, the Crystal Globe, at last year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Belarus is represented by two films: the documentary portrait Mara by Sasha Kulak, following a colourful woman through the mass demonstrations organised against the Lukashenko dictatorship; and another observational documentary, Where Are We Headed by Ruslan Fedotov, which takes a look at the Moscow Metro system as a mirror for Russian society. Three Ukrainian productions or co-productions are locking horns in the competition: a documentary portrait of wartime, Boney Piles [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Taras Tomenko
scheda film] by Taras Tomenko; the family drama Klondike [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Maryna Er Gorbach
scheda film] by Maryna Er Gorbach, also set on the front line, in the midst of the war on the Ukrainian-Russian border; and Sergei Loznitsa’s deeply unsettling Babi Yar. Context [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Sergei Loznitsa
scheda film]. Russia is participating with the Yakutian colonial drama Nuucha (Russia, 2021) by Vladimir Munkuev, set in late-19th-century Siberia.

The goEast Competition jury is chaired by Serbian actress Jasna Đuričić, who is accompanied by Ukrainian producer Natalia Libet, Georgian director Salomé Jashi, Polish journalist, filmmaker and curator Kornel Miglus, and Belarusian director Aliaksei Paluyan. The FIPRESCI jury features Alik Shpilyuk, artistic director at the Ukrainian Film Academy, programme director at the Odesa Film Festival and vice-president of FIPRESCI Ukraine; Senem Erdine, a film critic and curator from Turkey; and Konstanty Kuzma, the co-founder and co-publisher of the East European Film Bulletin, Germany.

The seven films in the Bioscop sidebar provide a panoramic overview of all that contemporary Central and Eastern European cinema has had to offer in the past year, while the traditional goEast symposium titled “Which Way to the East? Godard, Cinema and Ideology in Central and Eastern Europe” examines topics and trends in Central and Eastern European cinema through the work of Jean-Luc Godard, who has grappled with the East to an extraordinary degree. The festival is also paying homage to the work of Georgian filmmaker Lana Gogoberidze by showing ten of her films and organising a live talk with her. Another exciting retrospective programme is the “Thirty Years of Post-Soviet Cinema” line-up, which marks the anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union.