Interview with Christopher Buchholz, Festival Director- Festival du film francophone de Tübingen (Germany).
1) What makes the International Festival of Francophone Film unique?
The festival is designed to showcase the best francophone films of the year, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to give young filmmakers taking real risks in their work a chance to present it. The essential part, for me, is to help the audience discover the richness of Francophone cinema by offering them the broadest possible palette of films. This is why I say that the leitmotif of the festival is “From art-house to horror movie.” I’ve decided to give pride of place to experimental shorts, because they are often neglected in festival programs, and also because I believe that the most unbridled creativity and the greatest risk-taking usually takes place there. I also feel that we owe it to the public to present the works of outstanding filmmakers such as Jaco Van Dormael, Olivier Assayas and Michel Ocelot (all of whom will be there this year) through retrospectives and master classes, and to valorize the less visible film professions, such as original music scoring, editing, screenwriting, and photography, with awards.
2) This year, the theme is “Revolution Generation”…what can you tell us about this contemporarily relevant choice?
This year saw the wind of revolution sweep through the Maghreb and the Near-East with unprecedented force. We immediately decided to emphasize this “Arab Spring” and to offer our audience the latest Tunisian and Egyptian films dealing with the subject, as well as a round-table discussion of the events, their repercussions and their future. The International Festival of Francophone Film of Tübingen and Stuttgart has long had an important African section that, this year, had the pleasure of showing Moroccan, Tunisian, Egyptian and Congolose shorts and feature-length films. This spirit of revolution is also thematized in other films, under different aspects. There is the revolt of youth, in 17 Girls and The Giants; rebellion against the family in the marvelous Declaration of War , Crying Out and The End of Silence; agricultural uprising, in Larzac; and the Moroccan resistance during the Second World War in Free Men.
3) The city of Tübingen is well known for its university. Do many of the students attend your festival?
That’s where I concentrate most of my efforts, because it always seems that there aren’t enough students to take advantage of the 80 films we have to offer them. They are often busy with their coursework and don’t always take a great interest in Francophone film. This is mostly due to a certain archaic image of French art films as too “talky.” This is why I go to such pains to showcase different film genres, to show them that the francophone world has some marvelous films to offer, be they thrillers, horror films, art films, comedies or documentaries. The cinema is viewed as entertainment in Germany, and not as the “seventh art,” as it is in France. So I have organized many screenings for the schools and have created a special film section for families, in the hope of attracting teenagers and their parents to the theaters, where they can meet the directors and discuss the film themes together.
LIENS
Sébastien - unifrance.org 
