Before and after SCHLINGEL

After the festival is before the festival,” stated the team of the Int’l Film Festival for Children & Young Audiences SCHLINGEL, so they started preparing the 28th edition straight away. This year, the festival will take place from 23-30 September in Chemnitz, European Capital of Culture 2025!

 

   The list of SCHLINGEL Awards this year was long and impressive. Running again on an almost full capacity, the festival hosted approx. 200 international professionals. Among them were the members of the ECFA Jury – Egmont Elschner (Germany), Noy Levin (Israel) and Teresa Lima (Portugal) – selecting their award winning film: THE CROSSING (by Florence Miailhe, France/Germany/Czech Republic) tells about two siblings, forced to leave their homeland with their family. When getting separated from their parents, the children continue the journey on their own, in an odyssey across the entire continent. “Terrible things happen in this world, of which children are often the victims. These two kids struggle to survive but never lose hope. THE CROSSING is an artistic attempt to combine a strong story with extraordinary animation that has captivated us from the beginning.”

 

Meanwhile preparations for the next edition have started. In the 2023 edition, films selected by SCHLINGEL’s programme commission will be presented in various competitions and supplementary sections, like the Panorama section. The festival will maintain its three competitive feature film categories: Children’s Film (up to 10), Junior Film (11-13) and Youth Film (14+). In addition, there will be competitions for German Language Feature Films and International Animation.

The SCHLINGEL team is on the road, visiting festivals to network with filmmakers and industry professionals. In Berlin, together with ECFA, they will be pleased to organise, once again, the “Meeting of the European Children’s Film Community” on 18 February, during which the ECFA Awards will be presented.

SCHLINGEL already opened its Call for Entries; film submissions can be made via Filmfreeway.