Since its very beginning in 1996, SCHLINGEL International Film Festival for Children and Young Audience has developed from a small film week to Germany’s most comprehensive platform for children’s and youth films. One of our main objectives is to combine a varied selection of child-affine German, European and international film productions with a broad educational programme to facilitate film literacy among our young audiences. Over the years we have installed numerous workshops and activities to reach the children and adolescents attending our festival. We aim to extend these activities and also increase the number of visitors we have attracted so far. The continuation and expansion of collaborations with regional schools will be crucial as they give us the best possible access to our target group. During the festival we will welcome many young talents including child and young actors to accompany and discuss their films with our visitors. In order to extend the profile and impact of our festival beyond the Chemnitz region, however, we aim to increase the number of our satellite events in Saxony, Germany and internationally throughout the year. Our programme structure gives us the opportunity to include films for three different age groups and we aim to design a programme which reflects the great cultural diversity of the MEDIA area. The festival has become an event attracting both national and international film professionals and we intend to encourage their networking in order to increase the distribution of the films we screen. We are proud to be a festival which increasingly attracts films from countries with a low audiovisual production capacity and aim to facilitate their promotion in Germany as well as internationally. Our focus in 2014 will be on Poland which we hope to be an appealing choice to both our young audiences and the professionals we welcome for the festival.