The Lounge

Networking, celebrating, taking a break from the movie theater: The Filmfest Lounge is where industry professionals meet to discuss films they’ve seen and plan new ones. In the rooms reserved for the industry, you can get free coffee, work and get to know interesting colleagues from around the world.    

This year’s workshops, panel discussions, networking events and pitches offer a glimpse behind the scenes of filmmaking, provide opportunities to exchange ideas and show hands-on what it takes to make movies nowadays.  

Industry accreditation allows access to the lounge and all events that are not explicitly by registration only.  

Industry programme

How can we tell stories on film today and how can we find authenticity in them?

Around twenty events offer accredited guests a wide variety of ways to engage with the film industry, opening up discourses on current topics such as dealing with German colonial history in film and female filmmaking. In practice-oriented workshops, participants will work on animated short films and learn how to discover and utilize creative potential through physical acting practices. The industry takes a reflective look at itself and considers together: How can filmwork remain commercially successful and creative at the same time? Current problems will be analyzed and solutions proposed.

With international guests from Ukraine and Scotland as well as national stars from the production and distribution world, a diversity of content is created that expands the discourse. In cooperation with local and national partners such as nordmedia, Bremer Aufbaubank, the Institut Français and the Freie Agentur Bremen, and supported by the Senator for Culture, this year’s industry program offers international and local filmmakers, as well as interested members of the public, the opportunity to engage with film in all its breadth, to learn about cinematic practices and to enter into an exchange with one another.

You can find the industry events between the film programme

An overview and the program as PDF for download can be found below.

Registration is only required for two events. Further information can be found at the particular events.

Olha Kryvosheieva

Olha Kryvosheieva is an actress and was a guest lecturer at the Ernst BuschHochschule für Schauspielkunst in Berlin in 2022. Since 2016 she has been a lecturer at the Kharkiv National University of Arts named after I.P. Kotlyarevsky. She has experience as an acting teacher and coach. In her career, she has also performed as an actress at the “Wheels” theater and at the “Urban Theater” in Berlin.

Events by Olha:

• Playing with Imagination: A Pathway to Unlocking Creative Potential – Interactive Lecture with presentations by Olha Kryvosheieva
• Acting Game Training – Workshop by Olha Kryvosheieva

Julia Müller

Julia Müller is an animation director from Bremen, she currently lives in Frankfurt. She has been working as a freelance animator and director since 2018, realizing music videos, idents and short films.

Julia has been taking part in the Filmfest Bremen 48-hour challenge for many years, with several of her comedic short films winning a prize in the competition. This year she won the audience award with her short film Noch Nicht. You can watch the film here: https://youtu.be/bf6axhHKYR0.

In addition to her art school degree, she studied character design and screenwriting during two intensive workshops in Berlin.

Events by Julia:

• Comedy Animation Workshop with Julia Müller
• Results Comedy-Animation Workshop

Adura Onashile

Adura is an award winning Glasgow based actor, writer, playwright and director whose work has toured to India, Brazil, Trinidad, Jamaica, South Africa, Zimbabwe and New Zealand. She has worked with the National Theatre of Scotland, The Lyceum, The National, The Royal Shakespeare Company and The Young Vic.

She has premiered two sell out shows at the Edinburgh Festival, winning the Scottish Arts Club and Edinburgh Guide Best Scottish Contribution to Drama in 2013 and 2016, a Fringe First Award, and has also been nominated for the Alfred Fagon and TOTAL Theatre Awards. She is recipient of the Channel 4 Playwrights Bursary in 2018 in association with the Traverse Theatre.

She wrote and directed Ghosts for the National Theatre of Scotland in 2021.

Her BAFTA nominated short film, Expensive Shit has been shown in festivals internationally and won both the audience and critics award at the Glasgow International Film Festival. She is a screen star of tomorrow and her debut feature film Girl premiered at the 2023 Sundance Festival.

Events by and with Adura:

• Whose story is this? – Workshop by Adura Onashile

Sarah Aspinall

Sarah is an award-winning filmmaker, producing and directing documentaries for BBC, C4 and other major broadcasters.

After an unnusual childhood with her endlessly restless mother, she found that making films allowed her to keep moving. Her films have explored the worlds of Philip Roth, Andy Warhol, Anais Nin, Saul Bellow, The Coen Brothers, Rod Stewart, the Beach Boys, and Leonardo da Vinci, to name but a few. They have delved into the mysteries of JD Salinger’s reclusiveness, the cover up of the Windscale Nuclear reactor fire, and the truth about Charles Dickens’s secret lover. Her filming has taken her on several trips around India and the US, across Mexico and up the Nile and given her the fun of working in small teams and all the camaraderie that brings.

She always wanted to write, but found the quiet room and the hard chair difficult to deal with. Having built a cabin on a quiet beach she has finally managed to sit still and to write her first book, a memoir of that childhood. Diamonds at the Lost and Found is published by Fourth Estate.

Events by Sarah: 

• The Fairground Ride – Forty Films as a Film Maker – Lesung mit Sarah Aspinell