Kaurismäki, Considine and Bier pick up honours at Munich
The 29th Munich Film Festival (see news) closed on Saturday. Although the event doesn’t include any official competitions, as every year it awarded some important prizes, besides the honorary CineMerit Award given to one or two personalities who have made an outstanding contribution to international cinema – this year Otar Iosseliani and John Malkovich.
The ARRI Award (in its fourth edition and worth €30,000) for Best Foreign Film was handed to Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Aki Kaurismäki
film profile], which won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes. The CineVision Prize (worth €12,000) for Best International Debut Feature was awarded to Paddy Considine’s Brit drama Tyrannosaur [+see also:
trailer
film profile].
The German awards for newcomers were this year awarded by film director Hans Steinbichler, actress Sibel Kekilli and producer Ewa Karlström. €20,000 was awarded to director Tim Fehlbaum for his post-apocalyptic thriller Hell, starring Hannah Herzsprung; and the same amount went to producers Benny Drechsel and Karsten Stöter for The River Used to Be a Man by Jan Zabeil. Meanwhile, €10,000 went to David Falko Wnendt for the screenplay to his film Combat Girls; €5,000 to actress Alina Levshin for her role in the same film; and €5,000 to actor Golo Euler for Kasimir & Karoline.
The Bayern 3 Audience Prize, awarded for the first time in 2004, was given to Rudi Gaul’s German film Wader/Wecker Vaterland.
The Bernhard Wicki Award – The Bridge, which since 2002 has been honouring artists who speak out in favour of tolerance and humanism, went to this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner, In a Better World [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Denmark’s Susanne Bier. Marking the tenth anniversary of the award, two other directors were also honoured: Yasemin Samdereli for former Berlin contender Almanya – Welcome to Germany [+see also:
trailer
interview: Yasemin Samderely
film profile] (almost 1.2m admissions in Germany); and Maggie Peren for Colour of the Ocean [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. An honorary award was also given to Oscar-winning Viennese actor Maximilian Schell.
Three-time Oscar-winning French composer Michel Legrand was also in Munich to receive the "Look & Listen" Telepool/BR Award. For the full list of prize-winners, visit the festival’s website.
(Translated from French)
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