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FESTIVALS Germany

Munich announces winners, minus two

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The 27th Munich Film Festival, a German event second only in prestige to the Berlinale, announced its prize-winners this weekend, not without causing some controversy.

The most valuable prize, the Arri-Zeiss Award for Best Foreign Film (€50,000), went to Argentinean director Celina Murga for A Week Alone. The jury also praised Brillante Mendoza’s Cannes title The Execution of P [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
and André Téchiné’s The Girl on the Train [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
.

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The CineVision Award (worth €12,000), for non-German debut and second films, was presented to US director Frazer Bradshaw. Meanwhile, Austria’s Michael Haneke, recent winner of the Cannes Palme d’Or, received the CineMerit Award for career achievement.

The Bernhard Wicki Prize (€10,000), for artists whose work promotes tolerance, went to Hans-Christian Schmid for his German/Danish co-production Storm [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alexander Fehling
interview: Hans-Christian Schmid
film profile
]
, shown in competition at Berlin.

The jury of the One Future section, which focuses on films about our world’s common future, awarded its honorary prize to Peter Lilienthal (after Paul Verhoeven last year) and its main prize to Italian director Marco Pontecorvo’s PA-RA-DA [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
.

The White Elephant Award, for children’s films with educational value, went to Germany’s Christian Ditter for Die Vorstadtkrokodile [+see also:
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film profile
]
(“Suburban Crocodiles”).

The Bayern 3 Audience Award went to Björn Richie Lob’s German title Keep Surfing and the Young Audience Award to Amands Zvirbulis’ Little Robbers.

One decision nevertheless disappointed local participants: the Young German Cinema Award jury, who usually honour a young director (€20,000); a young producer (€20,000, which this year went to Katharina Schöde for Draußen am See); a screenwriter (€10,000); and up-and-coming actors (this year Elisa Schlott, Max Kidd and Tim Hoffmann), decided not to commend a director or screenwriter.

Festival director Andreas Ströhl expressed his surprise when commenting on this decision. He also said he understood the participants’ disappointment and maintained that he continued to believe in the high quality of the selection, in which every title deserved to be included.

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(Translated from French)

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