The European Psychoanalytic Film Festival

Organised by:

British Psychoanalytical Society (incorporating the Institute of Psychoanalysis)

Description

Katalin Lanczi and Anne Patterson, the new co-directors and the newly formed organising committee are delighted to announce ‘The European Psychoanalytic Film Festival’.

The theme of the festival is HOPE.

The last two years seem to have unleashed a veritable Pandora’s Box of disasters upon us: Brexit, Covid, the mounting evidence of climate catastrophe and the war in Ukraine.

The last item left in Pandora’s Box, according to Greek mythology, was HOPE.

HOPE can represent the capacity to maintain or regain a sense of a sustainable future both psychically and in the wider world, that is in the internal and the external world. Thus, hope can represent the life drive and our relationship with the good object. Conversely, it can be a defence against unbearable reality and loss when it is an expression of the manic defence.

The opening evening will introduce one of the most outstanding film directors of our time, Agnieszka Holland, our new Honorary President, whose work attests to both hope and despair.

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