GWFF Best First Feature Award
Since 2006, when it introduced the GWFF Best First Feature Award, the Berlinale has been even more committed to supporting the next generation of filmmakers. At the 75. Berlinale the award will be presented to a film premiering in the new section Perspectives. The award is endowed with 50,000 euros, donated by the GWFF (Gesellschaft zur Wahrnehmung von Film- und Fernsehrechten), a collecting society that safeguards the remuneration of film and television rights. The prize money is to be split between the producer and the director of the winning film. Additionally, the director will be awarded with a high-quality viewfinder as both a useful instrument and memorable trophy.
Jury Perspectives 2026
Sofia Alaoui (Morocco)
Sofia Alaoui is a Moroccan screenwriter and director. She gained international recognition with her short film Qu’importe si les bêtes meurent (So What If the Goats Die, 2020), which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the César Award for Best Short Film. In 2023, her feature debut Animalia (2023) premiered at Sundance where it was awarded the Special Jury Prize. Alaoui is currently developing several international projects, including The Delta at Sunset, a loose adaptation of a short story by J.G. Ballard, and Far North, a post-apocalyptic film co-written with Clara Royer. She is also working on Tarfaya, an Arabic-language project currently in financing, with filming scheduled to take place in southern Morocco.
Frédéric Hambalek (Germany)
Director and screenwriter Frédéric Hambalek studied film and American studies in Mainz. During his time at university, he made several short films that garnered international attention at festivals. His first feature film screenplay received the Tankred Dorst Award from the Drehbuchwerkstatt Munich, and his subsequent work as a writer earned him nominations for both the Grimme Award and the German Television Award. In 2020, his no-budget feature Modell Olimpia premiered at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. His second theatrical film, Was Marielle weiß (What Marielle Knows, 2025), was selected for the Competition of the 75th Berlinale and was later sold to more than 20 countries.
Dorota Lech (Poland / Canada)
Dorota Lech is the Festival Director of the New Horizons International Film Festival, a showcase of contemporary auteur-driven art house cinema as well as retrospectives and thematic programmes, held annually in Wrocław, Poland. She is also a programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), selecting films from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. She has curated retrospectives and special screenings at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, and the TIFF Cinematheque. Lech has been a guest lecturer at the Łódź Film School, New York University, the University of Toronto, and Harvard, as well as a frequent expert at Berlinale Talents. In 2024, she was named as a “Future Leader” in film curation by “Screen International”.