Hope: European Psychoanalytic Film Festival

Since its first edition in 2001, and every two years, the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival (epff) has become a prominent space that attracts hundreds of people from all over the world interested in cinema and psychoanalysis.

Epff returns this November for its eleventh edition at the Royal Society of Medicine in London thanks to Katalin Lanczi and Anne Patterson, the new co-directors, and the newly formed organising committee.

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A reunion with the richness of the worlds that became invisible to us (and whose absence affected us a great deal in recent years) will take place the weekend of November 4-6. The screening of carefully selected films will allow the topic of “hope” to be analysed, debated and reflected upon together with directors, psychoanalysts, academics, critics and film lovers.

The short film The End (2020) that we present below by the director and Emmy award winner, Susan Steinberg, in collaboration with Ana Rivadulla Crespo and Adelaida Monguillot (Ande Films), summarises the experience of epff10, the last edition of the festival that took place shortly before the end of a stage in our history as humanity was announced, an end in which technology took away many human spaces and which also coincided with other endings, including Brexit.

In this time of pain, loss, and transformation, we need the innovative force of hope to continue creating the reality we desire. The hope that is nourished by intuition and courage to face the fears and integrate the lights and shadows that appear along the way. The hope that another short film by director Susan Steinberg, edited by Adelaida Monguillot and with music by 3 argentinas, will open this new edition of the festival. The Hope (2017) poignantly describes the importance and meaning of objects for those who are forced to flee their home, as was the case with Sigmund Freud in 1938.