Festiwelt’s first ever Lange Nacht des Filmfestivals will offer a taste of 15 film festivals in one night, serving up a lush spread of over 80 film screenings on August 17, with bands, DJs and a poetry slam happening inside and around Ostkreuz’s ZUKUNFT in a marathon feast of film.
Perhaps the hottest dish will be the premiere screening of Pussy vs Putin (21:20), a full-length documentary brought to the fête by the human rights film festival One World Berlin, in cooperation with local Russian human rights NGO iDecembrists.
The film follows the travails of the brightly-garbed punk radicals, in particular the three who fell so foul of Putin’s government after their controversial capers in Moscow’s biggest Orthodox cathedral. As timing would have it, the screening falls on the one-year anniversary of the three defiant Rioters’ shocking sentencing, and the film is one of several Pussy Riot documentaries appearing at a time when the two still-imprisoned activists Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are making their thus far unsuccessful appeals for parole. Check out Exberliner’s interview with third prisoner Yekaterina Samutsevich, who was released in October.
Other documentary highlights include 2010’s RAW – Wir sind gekommen um zu bleiben (16:00), a look at the story of the Revaler Straße art collective’s fight to stay right where they are in the disused industrial complex off Warschauer Straße.
Lange Nacht des Filmfestivals | ZUKUNFT, Lakerstr. 5, S-Bhf Ostkreuz, http://www.festiwelt-berlin.de/events – tickets €10/€7, programme available here.
