NEW FOREIGN REPRESENTATIVE FOR EASTERN EUROPE & RUSSIA

Since the beginning of May, German Films is pleased to have a new colleague, Marcel Maïga, on board as our new foreign representative for Eastern Europe and Russia. Marcel Maïga (born in Berlin in 1968) knows the markets in these regions inside-out: he has been working as a programmer at the Film Festival Cottbus since 1996, where he was responsible for such sidebars as “Russkiy Den”, “Special Belarus”, “Spotlight Georgia” and “Moldavian Discoveries”. Maïga has also been a program coordinator at DOK Leipzig since 2011 and has been advising the Schlingel International Children's and Youth Film Festival since 2008. Asked what he considers the challenges for the region over the next few years, Maïga responded: “In the future, it will be important to maintain a cultural exchange by making German films accessible to a wide audience in Eastern Europe and stimulating a cultural discourse. German cinema has a good chance of finding an interested audience and securing its own niche in a region with such a high level of cultural education – as has already been the case with French and Italian films, for example. An increasing number of distributors are also interested in films from Western Europe, and German films are often being screened at film festivals. But the television market also offers opportunities for the distribution of German films.”

Marcel Maïga