Lichter Filmfest Frankfurt International

In the organizer's words:

The LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International is a festival for film. Since 2008, it has been bringing the region, its audience and its creatives together with guests from all over the world. Building bridges between film, artistic forms of expression and social dialog makes LICHTER something special among German film festivals.

The idea behind LICHTER is quickly explained: just as the hand is made up of five fingers, the LICHTER film festival is also made up of five sections. And just as the hand can form its fingers into a fighting fist, LICHTER bundles its five sections into a strong unit that sets all kinds of things in motion year after year.

International program

The festival program not only aims to entertain, but also to combine cinema and discourse. This is why the international program focuses on an annually changing theme. Its explosive topicality makes it possible to take a look at socio-political issues from the movie theater and discuss them from multiple perspectives thanks to the films. This takes place in numerous keynotes, panels and discussion rounds. In addition, LICHTER seeks interfaces with other cultural institutions and artistic disciplines with each festival edition.

Having already devoted itself to the themes of "City", "Revolution", "Humor", "Money", "Borders", "Truth", "Chaos", "Nature", "Power", "Change", "Freedom", "Love" and "Future", the 18th edition of the festival in 2025 will focus on the theme of "Fear".

The future of German film

When people talk about the future of German film, they usually think of young filmmakers. In order to show and support their films, quite a few newcomer awards are presented. But what about the future of German film, regardless of the biological age of its filmmakers? This is the subject of the film series ZUKUNFT DEUTSCHER FILM. Its curation focuses on German film itself. It aims to track down its opportunities and lines of development, to strengthen it where it has the most artistic confidence, and finally to show that German film, in its most successful cases, is far better than its reputation.

ZUKUNFT DEUTSCHER FILM is not only a film series, but also an initiative and congress: as such, it is dedicated to German filmmaking in a European context and has set itself the goal of finally consolidating the relevance of German cinematic art beyond the borders of Germany in close cooperation with opinion makers, agitators and relevant institutions in the field of film.

Regional film

The regional short and feature film competitions give the wide range of filmmaking from Kassel to Marburg and Giessen to the Rhine-Main region the publicity it deserves and strengthen it, especially in exchange with the national and international competition. Every year, two juries, always made up of renowned personalities, award the coveted LICHTER-Bembel in large and small versions.

Art Award

In 2010, the section for video art started with the exhibition "Stimulus Kino - Subliminal Cinema". The LICHTER Art Award was founded the following year and since then has invited artists from all over the world to take part in an international competition to present their work in the field of contemporary video art. An international jury selects five finalists whose films are exhibited during the LICHTER Film Festival. One of the films will be honored with the LICHTER Art Award. A large exhibition was held on the premises of basis e.v. to mark the tenth anniversary.

VR Storytelling Award

With the advance of digitalization, moving images are increasingly moving into space, breaking down the boundaries between the film world and the audience and transporting them directly and immediately to other places. For film, this means new opportunities for expression. Launched in 2017, the LICHTER VR Storytelling Award is dedicated to the numerous varieties of alternative realities. The experience gained in performance practice since then has also flowed into the concept for a House of Film Cultures presented by LICHTER 2021, which translates the cultural space of cinema into the future through its diversity of use and architecture.