Feb 28, 2020
Prize Winners in the Section Perspektive Deutsches Kino

The prize winners of the section Perspektive Deutsches Kino are:

• Compass-Perspektive-Award Janna Ji Wonders for Walchensee Forever
• Kompagnon-Fellowships: Hristiana Raykova (Perspektive Deutsches Kino 2019) and Ian Purnell (Berlinale Talents 2020)
• Heiner Carow Prize: Natalija Yefimkina for Garagenvolk

The Compass-Perspektive-Award for the best film of the programme goes to Janna Ji Wonders for the film Walchensee Forever.

On the closing evening of the Perspektive Deutsches Kino, jury members Melanie Andernach, Bernd Lange and Mia Spengler awarded the prize, which is endowed with 5,000 Euros. As a trophy, the director received a real compass, which is intended to serve as symbolic orientation and show her the direction to take going into the future.

Statement of the Jury:

This film is a crystal. The longer you look at it, the more you discover new facets. It portrays women of a family in Bavaria over five generations. Supplemented by extraordinary material obtained from the family's private archive, the protagonists report honestly, cleverly and directly to the camera. Accordingly, an overall picture of private life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries emerges from these individual stories. Everything that is told remains personal and individual and, not least because of the modest attitude of the filmmaker and her protagonists, it develops an overwhelming strength. Cleverly assembled, clearly filmed and narrated and produced with warm-heartedness, we listen to and watch Apa, Norma, Anna, Frauke and Janna. The silent chronicler of it all is the Walchensee, which connects all their lives.

The two Kompagnon-Fellowships Perspektive Deutsches Kino and Berlinale Talents go to Hristiana Raykova (Perspektive Deutsches Kino 2019) and to Ian Purnell (Berlinale Talents 2020) respectively.

Since 2017, the Kompagnon-Fellowship has been awarded for a new film project to an author and/or director from Berlinale Talents as well as to a director of Perspektive Deutsches Kino. With the Kompagnon-Fellowship, the Berlinale Talents and the Perspektive Deutsches Kino wish to sustainably support directors and screenwriters living in Germany in their work. In addition to the scholarship endowment of 5,000 Euros (short films: 2,500 Euros), the award also offers a mentoring programme with extra-occupational coaching aimed at strengthening one's personal hallmarks and at networking within the industry. The jury members Melanie Andernach, Bernd Lange and Mia Spengler awarded the prizes.

111 von Hristiana Rykova — Statement of the Jury:

What are we ready to give up for our freedoms? The Bulgarian journalist Miroluba Benatova could no longer accept the new conditions of her news channel. Voluntarily, she went into the precarious situation of working as a taxi driver so that she could continue telling the stories of the people in her country. The director Hristiana Raykova accompanies Miroluba Benatova on her journeys. Passengers become the reflection of a society, in a country that ranks 111th in the world and last in the EU in terms of freedom of the press. In order to give form to the courage and determination of this clever rebellion, we would like to award the Kompagnon-Fellowship to Hristiana Raykova's film 111.

Arctic Link von Ian Purnell — Statement of the Jury:

Arctic Link by Ian Purnell is a hybrid documentary and a visual essay. There is a ship in the Arctic. It will lay the longest fiber optic cable under the eternal ice to provide the world with faster internet connections. This is only possible due to climate change. The hybrid documentary Arctic Link by Ian Purnell combines the stories of the people on the ship with the reality of life in the Arctic village and in virtual love stories. Moreover, it relates human desires to the irreversible effects of our actions on the planet. We are looking forward to an impressive visual journey into the heart of the darkness of our present age.

The Heiner Carow Prize 2020 for the promotion of German cinematic arts goes to Natalija Yefimkina for Garagenvolk.

The prize, worth 5,000 Euros and sponsored by the DEFA Foundation, is awarded for the first time in the section Perspektive Deutsches Kino. The prize honours documentaries, feature or essay films that address the social and political issues of today and in history with extraordinary aesthetic means. A three-person jury consisting of Annekatrin Hendel, Anne Möller and Jan Speckenbach selected the winning film.
The award ceremony is barrier-free.

Statement of the Jury:

“The manhole cover is my door, but I'm happy. My life is beautiful,” says one of the characters in the film. Reaching a decision was very difficult for us in this strong year of the Perspektive Deutsches Kino. We chose Natalija Yefimkina's Garagenvolk. Cinema at its best.

The director allows us to peer into a microcosm that seems like a parallel world to us. The complex world of a morbid garage complex in a mining town in northern Russia is reminiscent of an allotment garden colony. In each of these small garages, as the film increasingly takes its time in observing, a universe of its own begins to unfold. Characters that seem bizarre at first become reflectors of society. Love, friendship and alcohol, dreams of prosperity and the future as well as inklings of joy all find a home here.

The future of all these people is NOW. And if the restless action, whether it is the search for scrap expansion of the basement, the crooked tones of the punk band rehearsal, the beating or the carved icons, if this action comes to a standstill, then the flow of life also stops, for there is no future then. While one of the protagonists digs five floors beneath his garage, a Sisyphean task without a goal, other than the delight of the moment, the film unearths images of a metaphorical dimension that go beyond mere observation. The absurdity of the actions in the characters' general hopelessness transforms the garage world more and more into reality. It's not the characters in the film who live in a parallel world, it's we who do.

Learn more about the Heiner Carow Prize.

Additional information as well as photographic material concerning the awards can be obtained here:

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Perspektive Deutsches Kino
Sarah Hoffmann
Tel. +49 30 259 20 462

Press Office
February 28, 2020