There is a stubborn belief that the series are suffocating the cinema.
As if thirty to forty-five minute binge-watching could ever compete with a movie night that had a beginning, middle and end!
At some point, even the last starers will understand that this is not possible.
Everyone else knows that anyway: It's something different to sit in a cinema with a lot of people, to discuss, to choose, sometimes to get stuck for a long time.
In view of the current abundance, this is easy.
Not only that more and more films are easily breaking the two-hour limit.
The already densely packed film festivals in Rhine-Main and Hesse have hardly ever been so close together as they are in 2023. They are catching up on what has not happened for almost three years: series, guests, discussions, exhibitions.
It starts with the fact that Africa Alive, the traditional festival of African film, extends over the whole of February, from the 1st to the 28th, and if it were a leap year, the festival team would certainly have found something for the 29th.
So it's still going on while the whole world makes its way from Hessen to Berlin to view films for the next festivals and to visit the get-togethers of the scene, from Hessen Film to the Film Museum.
Hardly back, and in the middle of the Easter holidays, the Lights Film Festival starts in Frankfurt, three days after its end comes in Wiesbaden Go East, and one has hardly caught a breath, the Japanese film festival Nippon Connection and the Turkish Film Festival form a dense block in June.
Who would still want to watch series - let alone find the time for it?
Binge-watching is taking place in the cinema this year.