A flurry of prizes were handed out during the closing ceremony of the 2018 edition of the Diagonale (13-18 March), which took place on Saturday night at the Orpheum venue in the city of Graz. The two top accolades, the Grand Diagonale Prizes of the Province of Styria for Best Austrian Feature Film and Best Documentary, were endowed with €21,000 each, and a total of more than €184,000 in prize money was awarded during the ceremony. 

The international jury for fiction features, comprising New Zealand film critic Carmen Gray, Munich International Film Festival curator Christoph Gröner and Austrian cinematographer Martin Gschlacht, was so impressed by the much-discussed Christian Frosch's Murer - Anatomie eines Prozesses [+lee también:
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Meanwhile, Austrian director Nikolaus Geyrhalter's formally precise border survey The Border Fence [+lee también:
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The Prize for Innovative Cinema from the City of Graz was bestowed upon ★ by Johann Lurf. The international jury said: "In his vertiginous, colossal work, Lurf gathers together imagery from no fewer than 550 films throughout the history of cinema […] Designed to be as comprehensive and ever-expanding as possible, ★ is more in the nature of a compendium than a fixed artistic product. It is a work of exhilarating thematic complexity, open to an almost unlimited range of interpretations." 

Meanwhile, the Diagonale acting prizes were this year given out as ensemble awards and went to the performers from Stefan A Lukacs’ Cops [+lee también:
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Here is the complete list of winners at the 2018 edition of the Diagonale: 

Grand Diagonale Prize for Best Feature Film
Murer - Anatomie eines Prozesses [+lee también:
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Grand Diagonale Prize for Best Documentary Film
The Border Fence [+lee también:
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Diagonale Prize for Best Innovative, Experimental or Animated Film
★ – Johann Lurf (Austria)

Best Short Feature Film
Entschuldigung, Ich Suche Den Tischtennisraum Und Meine Freundin – Bernhard Wenger (Austria/Germany/Sweden)

Best Short Documentary Film
Ars Moriendi oder die Kunst des Lebens – Kristina Schranz (Germany)

Best Young Talent Film
Entschuldigung, Ich Suche Den Tischtennisraum Und Meine Freundin – Bernhard Wenger

Diagonale Prize for Best Actor/Actress
Ensemble cast – Cops [+lee también:
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Ensemble cast – L'Animale [+lee también:
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entrevista: Katharina Mückstein
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Diagonale Prize for Fiction Feature Editing
Niki Mossböck – Mademoiselle Paradis [+lee también:
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entrevista: Barbara Albert
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entrevista: Ruth Mader
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Diagonale Prize for Documentary Feature Editing
Joana Scrinzi – Gwendolyn [+lee también:
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Diagonale Prize for Fiction Feature Cinematography
Mariel Baqueiro – Hagazussa [+lee también:
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Diagonale Prize for Documentary Feature Cinematography
Serafin Spitzer – Gwendolyn 

Diagonale Prize for Fiction Feature Sound Design
Niklas Kammertöns – Hagazussa 

Diagonale Prize for Documentary Feature Sound Design
Sergey Martynyuk – Zu ebener Erde (Austria)

Diagonale Prize for Production Design
Paul Horn – Phaidros (Austria)

Diagonale Prize for Costume Design
Peter Paradies – Phaidros

Prize for Outstanding Production Services
RitzlFilm – The Best of All Worlds [+lee también:
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Minifilm – Help, I Shrunk My Parents (Germany)