With the Berlin International Film Festival – the Berlinale – Germany boasts one of the world's great film festivals, ranked alongside Cannes, Toronto and Venice. But the festivals in Leipzig, Mannheim and Oberhausen, whose reputations date back to the 1950s and 1960s, have also gained the status of world-class cinematic events.
More recently, two major national festivals in Munich and Hamburg – neither with a competition – have taken their place alongside them, and have quickly gained notice and attracted participants far beyond Germany's boundaries. They embody a new breed of film event: the "audience festival."
