The 2024 edition of Filmfest Hamburg was the biggest in the German festival’s 32-year history, posting approximately 59,000 admissions to screenings, up from last year’s record-breaking total of 52,700.
This included the preceding open-air Binnenalster Filmfest, which ran from September 19-22.
The 10 days of the festival closed with the gala screening of Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door on October 5.
“So many of my dreams for this first year have come true. It feels truly magical,” said festival director Malika Rabahallah. “It was overwhelming to see so many renowned directors, actors, and filmmakers in Hamburg, all enjoying the special festival atmosphere with us.”
She said this year’s innovation, the ‘Free-for-all Day’ initiative on October 3 had been a huge success with over 90% capacity for the 35 free screenings in the five festival cinemas and a further nine venues around the city.
“I hope it won’t be a one-off,” said Rabahallah of the initiative.
Rabahallah continued the festival tradition of donating the money to charity that would have been spent on floral bouquets to filmmaker guests. This year’s charity was Afghan Volunteer Women’s Association which supports, medical care, water provision and educational programmes, among others, for women and children in Afghanistan.
Awards
The closing screening was preceded by the awards ceremony that saw Giovanni Tortorici’s debut feature Diciannove win the €5,000 NDR Young Talent award. A special mention was given to Constance Tsang’s Blue Sun Palace.
A second €5,000 award was presented to Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language by the jury of the CICAE Arthouse Cinema award. The award is backed by Hamburg’s local film fund MOIN for the markeing of the German release of the film in January 2025 by distributor Rapid Eye Movies.
The Critics’ Choice Award went to Ramon Zürcher’s The Sparrow In The Chimney, while the Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s prize for socially- engaged cinema was won by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie for feature documentary Sugarcane
The audience award was won by Roxana Samadi’s documentary Souls Unshackled - Let Us Be In A Hurry To Be Human.
The MICHEL Children and Youth Film Festival’s jury of seven children and young people aged between 12 and 16 presented its €10,000 award to Norwegian director Eirik Sæter Stordahl’s debut Lars is LOL about bullying, friendship and peer pressure, with a special mention going to It’s Okay! by South Korea’s Kim Hye-young.
Earlier in the week Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili became the second recipient of the €10,000 Albert Wiederspiel prize for International Film Directing, launched in 2023 by the Hapag-Lloyd Foundation and named after Rabahallah’s predecessor as Filmfest director.
The prize was presented ahead of the German premiere of Kulumbegashvili’s April which won the special jury prize in Venice’s last month.
Additionally, Ukraine’s Molodist International Film Festival, the festival within a festival held for a third year as part of Filmfest Hamburg, presented its Scythian Deer prize for best film in the national competition to Maryna Vroda’s debut feature Stepne; a special mention was given to Dmytro Moiseiev’s Grey Bees.
Guests
The 2024 edition of the Filmfest hosted more than 300 guests from 29 countries, including directors Nora Fingscheidt, Matthew Rankin, Michel Hazanavicius, Chiara Fleischhacker, Jacques Audiard, Thomas Vinterberg, Fleur Fortuné as well as actors Diane Kruger, Iryna Ostrovska, Anatole Taubmann, Vishka Aseyesh, Lamin Leroy Gibba, and Maiwène Barthelemy, among others.
Highlights during the Filmfest’s 10 days included the German premiere of Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed Of The Secret Fig, the world premieres of two debut features - Chiara Fleischhacker’s Vena and Carly M. Borgstrom’s Spirit In The Blood -, and the screening of all six episodes of the TV series Black Fruit casting an idiosyncratic spotlight on the lives of Black and queer people in Hamburg.
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