There are events that need to be celebrated big. On the one hand because you can be proud of what you have achieved, on the other hand because you want to be carried away by the congratulations of the guests into a new phase of life that is as good as possible. The 40th anniversary of the Munich Film Festival offers plenty of opportunity for this, as you can experience on Friday in the Isarphilharmonie: Because you can finally celebrate uninhibitedly again at the first festival after the end of the pandemic. Because the opening film, The Persian Version, is a rousing, funny, danceable comedy. And because guests like Ottfried Fischer, Sunnyi Melles, Veronica Ferres, Iris Berben, Maria Furtwängler, Doris Dörrie and Martin Moszkowicz can spend an evening looking back on four decades in which international stars and grand masters of cinema, art house directors, but also hopeful ones newcomers had their performances.
For festival director Diana Iljine, 58, this anniversary is also a farewell. In the fall, she resigns voluntarily, after the recent difficult Corona years and quite changeable political signals as far as financing is concerned. The big breakthrough, combined with significantly more money and support from the state government, as Markus Söder had promised in 2018, has not materialized.
Nevertheless, Iljine, who came with the aim of making the event more glamorous, looks back on good times: On stage, in conversation with the program curators Julia Weigl and Tobias Krell, she talks about her beginnings as a ticket ripper for the still young film festival in the 1980s and from her encounter with the Hollywood diva Audrey Hepburn in 1992 – as a guest attendant, Iljine learned how to combine elegance and that certain radiance with friendliness.
Many more encounters came later as the head of the film festival, for example with the director Sofia Coppola, the actress Emma Thompson and the “Breaking Bad” actor Bryan Cranston, who was royally amused at how informal a premiere party on the Isar was compared to the well-clocked sponsors -Events in Hollywood can run.
After the speeches and good wishes, the stage belongs to the cinema. The US director Maryam Keshavarz came to the German premiere of “The Persian Version” with her leading actresses Layla Mohammadi and Niousha Noor, there is rarely so much glamor on the red carpet here. Humor and speed characterize this film, but also a feeling for “the complexity of our time”, as the artistic director Christoph Gröner says in his introduction. In any case, the enthusiasm for this Persian-American comedy of generations is contagious, one would like to dance along. Cinema is simply irresistible!