With the Crossing Europe Filmfestival Linz (AT), Festival de Sevilla (ES), European Film Festival Palić (RS), Les Arcs European Film Festival (FR), Scanorama European Film Forum (LT), Trieste Film Festival (IT) and the FilmFestival Cottbus (DE) many years of competence and experience are combined, which is used to discuss and further develop topics of the future such as audience building, environmental and climate protection, gender and diversity programming and questions of digital communication.
This has been recognized and supported by the Creative Europe - MEDIA program of the European Union since fall 2020. In addition to the professional exchange of film festivals, MIOB naturally supports films and their makers.
MIOBs story begins in 2017: Crossing Europe Film Festival in Linz (Austria) initiated the film festival network "Moving Images - Open Borders" (MIOB) together with this six other European film festivals.
All member festivals are dedicated to European cinema with all its artistic facets, regional characteristics and socio-political upheavals. All festivals are European industry meeting points and audience festivals at the same time. The partner festivals are united on a programmatic level by a focus on young talents of European cinema, who are able to familiarise themselves with the mechanisms of the international festival circuit and to establish extended contacts within the international film industry.
Some member festivals make use of the synergies with their parallel film and co-production events. Other focal points are the organisation of special series on socio-politically relevant topics that discuss current challenges for civil society and political culture in Europe, film education initiatives and creative approaches to win new audiences for European films.
The partner festivals had already been in contact for several years in order to exchange ideas on content and logistics. With the founding of the MIOB network, this exchange was raised to a formal level.
MIOB was present with an advertisement in the publications of the member festivals. Since then, the exchange of experience on an organisational and programmatic level between the member festivals has been steadily intensified.
In 2019, the member festivals decided to submit an application for funding for the MEDIA Support to European Networks of Festivals. The network looks forward that the corresponding support will help to intensify efforts to develop strategies for sustainable, long-term co-operation and a best-practice model of European festival co-operation, thus promoting the circulation of European films, finding new audiences, supporting talents and fostering the dialogue about European values.
Since then, various meetings have also taken place, some of them combined with public presentations.
