Competing films at the GoEast festival

There are 16 films from Central and Eastern Europe in the goEast competition: 10 feature films and six documentaries. With "The Dead Nation," director Radu Jude from Romania has entered his first documentary into the competition for the festival's awards. The film provides insights into life in Romania between 1937 and 1946 that are simultaneously poetic and realistic.

Marta Meszaros is the Grande Dame of Hungarian cinema and her latest film, "Aurora Borealis" tells the story of a Viennese lawyer with Hungarian roots. In it, Meszaros looks back at several generations of strong women, who, like the film's director, rebel against totalitarian systems. The film could be interpreted as a commentary on contemporary Hungary.

It's not only in Hungary where the fundamental rules of democratic law are currently fading. Poland's political shift is the focus of Andrzej Jakimowski's film "Once Upon A Time in November." The societal drama contains documentary footage as it tells the story of a young law student and his mother in the midst of a country where "patriots" and right-wing extremists are marching in.

Poland likewise has a place in the movie "Miracle," by Lithuanian director Egle Vertelyt. In it, a small-town Polish pastor, played by Daniel Olbrychski, creates satirical scenes as an American with Lithuanian roots tries to settle down in a post-Soviet Lithuanian town — the director's own hometown.

If you study it closely enough, you might interpret "The Bottomless Bag" by Russian Rustam Khamdamov as an escape from the present. How else could one critically yet realistically tell the story of a country in the time of Vladimir Putin? Khamdamov shapes his film around the wonderful photographed fairy tales of "1,001 Arabian Nights" and movies by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.

Hanna Slak really digs into Europe's post-war history in the most literal sense as director of the film "The Miner." A Slovenian mine abandoned after Second World War is the subject of the film; as miners go underground to uncover its secrets, new layers of cover-up, crime and old hostilities come to light.

The Albanian film "The Marriage" by Blerta Zeqiri tells the story of a man's coming to terms with his sexuality, with his early love and the cover-up that followed. In it, a couple who intends to marry, quarrels shortly before the ceremony and everything is thrown off-balance. Secrets of the past are revealed through an earlier boyfriend who also sheds light on the events of the present.

"It is as necessary and urgent as ever to place the focus of a film festival that is based in western Germany onto Central and Eastern Europe," said Dutch film producer and curator Heleen Gerritsen, whose master's degree focused on transition economics in Eastern Europe. The 2018 film festival goEast is held from April 18 to 24 in Wiesbaden, in central western Germany.