"Brighton 4th" by Levan Koguashvili from Georgia won the Ecumenical Jury Prize in Cottbus 2021. It also received the Prize of the Jury of International Film Critics (Fipresci). The Lubina for Best Competition Film was awarded by the festival jury to "107 Mothers" (Cenzorka) by Peter Kerekes (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Ukraine 2021).
On 2 November, the festival opened with the film " Compartment No. 6" (Hytty nro 6) by Juho Kuosmanen from Finland, which was awarded a Commendation by the Ecumenical Jury in Cannes and won the Audience Award in Cottbus. In addition to the 12 productions in the feature film competition, from which the Ecumenical Jury chooses its winner, the festival screened 13 films in the short film competition and 7 in the youth film competition. Special sections were dedicated to cinema in Turkey, Slovakia and Poland. A total of 170 films were shown in Cottbus this year.