International Stop Kicks Off the 61st AAFF Tour in Ann Arbor Sister City Tübingen

June 5, 2023

AAFF is a pioneer of the traveling film festival tour which launched in 1964, the festival’s second year, with film screenings in Paris, Los Angeles, and Berkeley. Since that time, the AAFF tour has presented hundreds of influential works in cities across North America and around the world, so it's with great pleasure that we announce that the 61st tour begins with a first-ever stop at an Ann Arbor Sister City.

On Tuesday, June 6, the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut Tübingen will present a program of short films selected from the recent 61st festival in March “in order to show our Tübingen audience a different, interesting and mind-bending side of its sister city Ann Arbor.” The tour returns to Michigan in July with a screening hosted by the Kalamazoo Film Society on July 14.

Selected as award-winners from the festival or as films with a unique perspective, DAI Tübingen will screen Program 1, a collection of eight films drawn from the 61st Ann Arbor Film Festival that includes Parasite Family by Thai filmmaker Prapat Jiwarangsan and winner of the Peter Wilde Award for Most Technically Innovative Film; the documentary Daron, Daron Colbert by Detroit-based filmmaker Kevin Steen and winner of the UMCU Audience Award; 2cent / 10coil by New York filmmaker Monteith McCollum and recipient of the Gil Omenn Art & Science Award; Eclipsis by Mexican filmmaker Tania Hernández Velasco and winner of the Susan Dise Best Experimental Film; Language Unknown by filmmaker Janelle VanderKelen and winner of the Lawther/Graff No Violence Award; Arrest in Flight by Swiss filmmaker Adrian Flury and winner of the Chris Frayne Award for Best Animated Film (making it eligible for consideration at the 2024 Academy Awards); Diomysus by UK Filmmaker Emily Elizabeth Morus-Jones, winner of the Prix DeVarti for Funniest Film; and rough cut botanical by UK Filmmaker Wendy Kirkup.

The Kalamazoo Film Society will screen Program 2, which features 7 films from the 61st AAFF that includes Of Wood by Owen Klatte and winner of the Best Experimental Animation Award; Max and the Freaks by Swiss Filmmaker Nathan Clement and winner of the Kodak Cinematic Vision Award; Fleshwork by Lydia Cornett and winner of the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker; Conversation with a Koel Bird by Singapore-based filmmaker Yuan Li Elizabeth Xu and winner of the Terri Schwartz Asian Film Award; In the Big Yard Inside the Teeny-Weeny Pocket by Japanese filmmaker Yoko Yuki; and juror-award winning films In Passing by Anna Johnson and Singing in Oblivion by Eve Heller.

Each year, the Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) tour provides filmmakers the unique opportunity of having their work screened in front of audiences for whom, and in many places, the tour venue is their only access to this form of film art. Each filmmaker participating in the AAFF tour is also paid for each tour stop, directly supporting their filmmaking. If you would like to see the AAFF Tour at your venue (or in the city where you live and have a venue in mind), please let us know at tour@aafilmfest.org.

For the complete list of films in the two available programs, please visit aafilmfest.org/tour.