Three new awards have been handed out in recognition of Albert Wiederspiel’s popular 21-year tenure as festival director of Filmfest Hamburg.
Online platform Palais F*luxx and the initiatives ProQuote Film and Let’s Change the Picture presented the ‘Diversity 67+ - Pitching Award for Contemporary Images of Women’ at the Industry Days.
Writer-director Imogen Kimmel was awarded €1,000 for her story idea entitled Loslassen; and two prizes each of €500 were won by screenwriter Christina Reuter for Final Round and writer-director Katinka Kulens Feistl for Irmas wildes Herz.
The three had pitched film ideas of stories featuring female protagonists aged over 60. They were chosen from 12 finalists who had each been selected by actresses Laura Schuhrk and Gesine Cukrowski from more than 50 submissions. A jury of Eleonore Weisgerber, Renan Demirkan and Sophie Molitoris had chosen the final three.
The cash prizes were donated by ARD Degeto, the film rights trader and production company of the ARD public-service network during one of Industry Days’ sessions on diversity, intersectionality and anti-discrimination.
The second new award, the Albert Wiederspiel Award, was presented courtesy of the long-standing festival sponsor, the Hapag-Lloyd Foundation. Iranian writer-director Farhad Delaram won a cash prize of €10,000 for his debut feature Achilles that had its German premiere at the Filmfest after debuting at Toronto last month and going on to screen at San Sebastian.
The Iran-Germany-France co-production focuses on two outsiders in modern Iran who have been mistreated and changed by a corrupt, oppressive system. International sales are being handled by Visit Films.
Speaking about the choice of Delaram’s film as the recipient of the first Albert Wiederspiel Award, the festival director said: “The opposition Iranian filmmakers make films under conditions that are inconceivable to us. And yet, or perhaps because of this, Iranian cinema has developed a distinctive film language. The existential problems in Iranian society are portrayed in such a way that they also touch us.”
“The fact that such films are being made in Iran is a glimmer of hope and through the prize I hope that attention will be drawn to all of Iran’s opposition filmmaker.”
Meanwhile, the Filmfest’s children and youth section MICHEL presented the new €10,000 MAJA Award to Sander Burger’s Netherlands–Luxembourg-Germny co-production Totem, about the daughter of Senegalese asylum seekers, who discovers her roots thanks to a gigantic porcupine.
The jury of seven children and teenagers also gave an honourable mention to UK writer-director Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper about a 12-year-old girl who is forced to raise herself after her mother’s death.
Filmfest Hamburg runs untitl October 7.
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