23/11/2006

After a very successful 10th edition that ended on October 28, the Cinénygma Luxembourg International Film Festival has announced that it will no longer organise festivals “under its current structure”.

The news comes as a serious blow, as it was the only opportunity in the region to view films on the big screen that did not have a distributor. It also removes Luxembourg from the European festival map, as Cinénygma represented the Grand Duchy at the Coordination of European Film Festivals and at the European Federation of Fantastic Film Festivals (where it was vice-president).

The organisers’ international contacts further allowed Luxembourg to be represented in various other European programmes and allowed international exposure of local talent: thanks to a screening at the festival, Beryl Koltz’s Luxembourg short Starfly won the Méliès d’Or for the Best European Fantastic Short Film.

There are two related reasons for the end of Cinénygma: funding problems and the imminent arrival of a rival festival that is part of the 2007 Luxembourg Culture Capital of Europe celebrations. Cinénygma has always been dependent on the Film Fund Luxembourg for a significant part of its budget, which was never increased over the years (neither was the Fund’s own budget by the state, despite tireless lobbying). As a result, Cinénygma has had to downsize as costs increased.

With regards to the arrival of a new festival, the organisers of Cinénygma stated: “We deplore the fact that the City of Luxembourg and Luxembourg 2007 prefer to support a new festival, which is purchased from outside Luxembourg for the impressive sum of €500,000 – the new festival’s budget before taking into account private sponsorship. It also become(s) clear that private sponsorship of the Luxembourg 2007 programme would have made it impossible for Cinénygma to find new sponsors for the next festival”.

As a festival specialising in horror and anything fantastic, death has often been on its menu, but never has its own situation looked so grim.