Press Release #4/26
Opening Films 2026 | Tribute: European Eighties | Working Worlds 2026
06.04.2026 // The 23rd Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz will open on 28 April. In this press release, we are announcing the titles of the four opening films, which are representative of the cinematic spectrum of this year’s festival program. The Tribute program section is dedicated to European Eighties Cinema, while the Working Worlds section this year is titled “At the Limit – and No End.”
Opening Films on 28 April
A tried and tested tradition of Crossing Europe, once again the festival will open with four productions representative of the artistic and thematic diversity featured in the festival program. Moreover, there will be screenings of films from several program sections in the afternoon, prior to the official opening.
In DONKEY DAYS (NL/DE 2025, European Panorama Fiction; world premiere: Locarno Film Festival 2025), sisters Anna and Charlotte are constantly in their mother’s orbit, vying for her attention and tolerating insults about weight and looks in the process. Employing dark humor and anachronistic fantasy sequences, director and Crossing Europe award-winner Rosanne Pel draws a vivid picture of a dysfunctional family unit.
A few weeks after the siege of Sarajevo started, ten-year-old Mirela and more than 60 other children were brought to Italy in a bus convoy. Around thirty years later, director Massimiliano Battistella’s DOM (IT/BA 2025, world premiere: Giornate degli Autori / Venice 2025) accompanies her on a voyage into her past, in search of her own identity: It is her first return to Bosnia, as well as to the orphanage where she grew up until 1992.
The Tribute program section in 2026 is dedicated to the European cinema of the 1980s, opening with Chantal Akerman’s first and only musical comedy: In GOLDEN EIGHTIES (FR/BE/CH 1986; world premiere: Cannes Film Festival 1986), there develops a candy-bright banter of love under the neon lights of a department store’s consumer world; a criticism of love as a currency amid the fashion-, consumption- and hairdo-crazed eighties that is both shrill and bittersweet.
Gábor Holtai’s feature-length debut ITT ÉRZEM MAGAM OTTHON / FEELS LIKE HOME (HU/CZ 2025; world premiere: Sitges Film Festival 2025) opens this year’s Night Sight: Hauntingly staged, brilliantly performed, and shattering genre conventions with its clever plot twists, this psycho-thriller has become a hit with audiences in Hungary, maybe not least because it can be read as a snappy critique of autocracy. Also to be screened at SLASH ½ in Vienna on the weekend after Crossing Europe.
Tribute: European Eighties
For the first time this year, the Crossing Europe Tribute is not dedicated to the body of work of individual filmmakers or a collective, but to a decade: The nostalgia for the proverbial “eighties” tenaciously remains in the limelight of pop culture, often fueled by the aesthetic reservoir of American film history. Diskollektiv – Andrey Arnold, Valerie Dirk, Iris Fraueneder, and Ulrike Wirth – presents what makes the mythological space of the European Eighties, specifically spotlighting the European middle-class milieus of that era and contemplating them from a primarily feminist perspective.
Chantal Akerman’s musical comedy GOLDEN EIGHTIES (FR/BE/CH 1986; see opening films) is joined by Christian Schocher’s semi-documentary cult film TRAVELLING WARRIOR DIRECTOR’S CUT (CH 1981/2008), BURNING AN ILLUSION (GB 1981), Menelik Shabazz’ classic of Black British Cinema, the courtroom thriller A QUESTION OF SILENCE (NL 1982) by Marleen Gorris, who would later win an Oscar, as well as Elfi Mikesch and Monika Treut’s queer BDSM film SEDUCTION: THE CRUEL WOMAN (DE 1985), which was the subject of heated controversy at the time.
Working Worlds: At the Limit – and No End
For over two decades, the Working Worlds have been taking a thorough look at the manifold European realities of employment. The focus this year is on those frequently overlooked: people who do manual labor, who are getting their hands dirty every day; who produce, maintain, and clean things – and who, in some circumstances, leave to then work a second job. As well as on those who organize themselves, who will not put up with abuse and who fight for fairer pay and more dignified working conditions – and whose struggle is also met with success.
In addition to Kilian Armando Friedrich’s feature film I UNDERSTAND YOUR DISPLEASURE (DE 2026, Stadtkino Filmverleih), the program includes three documentary works: Anastasiya Miroshnichenko’s WELDED TOGETHER (FR/NL/BE 2025), Srđan Kovačević’s THE THING TO BE DONE, and Anton Shtuka’s THE LAST PROMETHEUS OF DONBAS (UA 2025).
The program was curated by Lina Dinkla (DOK Leipzig) and Katharina Franck. With the kind support of AK Oberösterreich/Kultur.
The logo, festival motif and press photos are available as usual on our website.
Opening Films on 28 April
A tried and tested tradition of Crossing Europe, once again the festival will open with four productions representative of the artistic and thematic diversity featured in the festival program. Moreover, there will be screenings of films from several program sections in the afternoon, prior to the official opening.
In DONKEY DAYS (NL/DE 2025, European Panorama Fiction; world premiere: Locarno Film Festival 2025), sisters Anna and Charlotte are constantly in their mother’s orbit, vying for her attention and tolerating insults about weight and looks in the process. Employing dark humor and anachronistic fantasy sequences, director and Crossing Europe award-winner Rosanne Pel draws a vivid picture of a dysfunctional family unit.
A few weeks after the siege of Sarajevo started, ten-year-old Mirela and more than 60 other children were brought to Italy in a bus convoy. Around thirty years later, director Massimiliano Battistella’s DOM (IT/BA 2025, world premiere: Giornate degli Autori / Venice 2025) accompanies her on a voyage into her past, in search of her own identity: It is her first return to Bosnia, as well as to the orphanage where she grew up until 1992.
The Tribute program section in 2026 is dedicated to the European cinema of the 1980s, opening with Chantal Akerman’s first and only musical comedy: In GOLDEN EIGHTIES (FR/BE/CH 1986; world premiere: Cannes Film Festival 1986), there develops a candy-bright banter of love under the neon lights of a department store’s consumer world; a criticism of love as a currency amid the fashion-, consumption- and hairdo-crazed eighties that is both shrill and bittersweet.
Gábor Holtai’s feature-length debut ITT ÉRZEM MAGAM OTTHON / FEELS LIKE HOME (HU/CZ 2025; world premiere: Sitges Film Festival 2025) opens this year’s Night Sight: Hauntingly staged, brilliantly performed, and shattering genre conventions with its clever plot twists, this psycho-thriller has become a hit with audiences in Hungary, maybe not least because it can be read as a snappy critique of autocracy. Also to be screened at SLASH ½ in Vienna on the weekend after Crossing Europe.
Tribute: European Eighties
For the first time this year, the Crossing Europe Tribute is not dedicated to the body of work of individual filmmakers or a collective, but to a decade: The nostalgia for the proverbial “eighties” tenaciously remains in the limelight of pop culture, often fueled by the aesthetic reservoir of American film history. Diskollektiv – Andrey Arnold, Valerie Dirk, Iris Fraueneder, and Ulrike Wirth – presents what makes the mythological space of the European Eighties, specifically spotlighting the European middle-class milieus of that era and contemplating them from a primarily feminist perspective.
Chantal Akerman’s musical comedy GOLDEN EIGHTIES (FR/BE/CH 1986; see opening films) is joined by Christian Schocher’s semi-documentary cult film TRAVELLING WARRIOR DIRECTOR’S CUT (CH 1981/2008), BURNING AN ILLUSION (GB 1981), Menelik Shabazz’ classic of Black British Cinema, the courtroom thriller A QUESTION OF SILENCE (NL 1982) by Marleen Gorris, who would later win an Oscar, as well as Elfi Mikesch and Monika Treut’s queer BDSM film SEDUCTION: THE CRUEL WOMAN (DE 1985), which was the subject of heated controversy at the time.
Working Worlds: At the Limit – and No End
For over two decades, the Working Worlds have been taking a thorough look at the manifold European realities of employment. The focus this year is on those frequently overlooked: people who do manual labor, who are getting their hands dirty every day; who produce, maintain, and clean things – and who, in some circumstances, leave to then work a second job. As well as on those who organize themselves, who will not put up with abuse and who fight for fairer pay and more dignified working conditions – and whose struggle is also met with success.
In addition to Kilian Armando Friedrich’s feature film I UNDERSTAND YOUR DISPLEASURE (DE 2026, Stadtkino Filmverleih), the program includes three documentary works: Anastasiya Miroshnichenko’s WELDED TOGETHER (FR/NL/BE 2025), Srđan Kovačević’s THE THING TO BE DONE, and Anton Shtuka’s THE LAST PROMETHEUS OF DONBAS (UA 2025).
The program was curated by Lina Dinkla (DOK Leipzig) and Katharina Franck. With the kind support of AK Oberösterreich/Kultur.
The logo, festival motif and press photos are available as usual on our website.
Comprehensive press release HERE: