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FILMFEST MÜNCHEN 2022 Awards

The Ordinaries wins the German Cinema New Talent Award for Best Director at Filmfest München

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- As every year, the festival has bestowed a series of awards upon new talents from the young generation of German filmmakers, as well as several other prizes across different categories

The Ordinaries wins the German Cinema New Talent Award for Best Director at Filmfest München
The award winners with the directors of the festival: (l-r) Florian Plumeyer, Katharina Woll, Diana Iljine, Sophie Linnenbaum, Laura Klippel, Britta Strampe, Lena Schmidtke and Christoph Gröner

After ten days, this year's edition of Filmfest München (23 June-2 July), the second-biggest festival in Germany after the Berlinale, has come to an end. Besides the main competition dedicated to international films, mostly shown shortly beforehand at festivals such as Cannes or Venice, Filmfest München is particularly highly valued for serving as a window on contemporary German cinema.

A series of awards are given out in this context by a jury of three young talents in four categories. This year’s jury was composed of actress Almila Bagriacik (Nimby – Not in My Back Yard [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, Sisters Apart [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
), producer Ingo Fliess (The Girl with the Golden Hands, Tales of Franz) and director Sönke Wortmann (Locked-in Society, Contra). They gave the Award for Best Director to Sophie Linnenbaum for her first fiction feature, The Ordinaries [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sophie Linnenbaum
film profile
]
. Linnenbaum is already the creator of a series of documentaries. After Munich, her feature, a tragicomic social satire, for which she wrote the screenplay together with Michael Fetter Nathansky (Sag Du Es Mir [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
), also took part in the Crystal Globe Competition at Karlovy Vary.

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The jury in Munich foresees a great future for the helmer: “The director blends everything into one, harmonious whole and excels in countless bursts of directorial inspiration. Yet she always makes time for the quiet parts as well – because she knows that a good comedy is only one step away from tragedy.” The Ordinaries also snagged the Award for Best Production, which went to producers Britta Stampe and Laura Klippel. Indeed, the jury was full of praise for them: “You have to rub your eyes in amazement: is this supposed to be a graduation film made at university? The film has what feels like a multimillion-dollar budget. The talent assembled in front of and behind the camera is unbelievable; the complexity of the design is awe-inspiring. Britta Strampe and Laura Klippel from Bandenfilm have produced a film that is both entertaining and clever. To them, astuteness and entertainment are not a contradiction in terms. The world needs such producers – and we see a great future in store for both of them!”

The Award for the Best Screenplay went to Everybody Wants to Be Loved [+see also:
trailer
interview: Katharina Woll
film profile
]
, written by director Katharina Woll together with Florian Plumeyer. Their movie, starring Anne Ratte-Polle in the main role, tells the story of a middle-aged woman and psychiatrist trying to fulfil the expectations of everyone in her family and those of her patients, but losing sight of her own necessities and wishes. In its motivation, the jury stated: “It’s a sophisticated array of characters with conflicting wants and needs. Everybody wants to be loved, yes, but most importantly, everybody threatens everybody else: the daughter with moving out, the husband with moving away, the mother with her very existence. The dialogue in the film is incisive and believable, and gets to the heart of conversations in relationships. That’s what makes it so poignant – and so entertaining.”

The fourth prize handed out in the context of the German Cinema New Talent Award was the one for Best Acting Performance, which went to Lena Schmidtke for her turn as a young, single mother in the drama Rage at Kuba by Naira Cavero Orihuel. The drama is her graduate film from the University of Television and Film Munich, where she is studying Direction.

Besides the section for German films, the festival also has a CineMasters competition, in which several other prizes were awarded. The main one is the ARRI Award, sponsored by the festival's long-time partner ARRI. The jury, composed of German producer Philipp Kreuzer (Isolation [+see also:
trailer
interview: Julia von Heinz, Olivier Gu…
film profile
]
, Zeros and Ones [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
), German actress Sibel Kekilli (Fox in a Hole [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Arman T Riahi
film profile
]
) and US director Riley Stearns (The Art of Self-Defense, Dual), chose Broker by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda as Best International Film. An Honourable Mention went to the tragicomic family portrait Leila's Brothers by Iranian director Saeed Roustaee.

Furthermore, in the third competition of the festival, the CineVision Award for Best International Emerging Film went to Aftersun [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Scottish helmer Charlotte Wells. The coming-of-age drama and intimate portrait of a father-daughter relationship was appreciated by the jury, who expressed their feelings in the following way: “This film is a true CineVision. The view through the camcorder immediately connects us emotionally to father and daughter, and their loving relationship. This film manages to take us on a holiday that we can all identify with. We smell the air, taste the sea, feel the heat on our skin, feel the chlorine in our eyes. With humour, love and lightness, we are drawn to our memories, even when they leave us paralysed.”

This year, the festival added a new competition to its programme. The CineRebels section is “a platform for format breakers, film adventurers and cinephile film taste”, according to the event. The first award in this section went to the family drama Cook F**k Kill [+see also:
trailer
interview: Mira Fornay
film profile
]
by Czech director Mira Fornay.

Here is the complete list of award winners at the 2022 Filmfest München:

German Cinema New Talent Award – Best Director
The Ordinaries [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sophie Linnenbaum
film profile
]
– Sophie Linnenbaum (Germany)

German Cinema New Talent Award – Best Screenplay
Florian Plumeyer and Katharina Woll - Everybody Wants to Be Loved (Germany)

German Cinema New Talent Award – Best Production
Britta Strampe and Laura Klippel - The Ordinaries

German Cinema New Talent Award – Best Acting Performance
Lena Schmidtke - Rage at Kuba (Germany)

ARRI Award for Best International Film
Broker - Hirokazu Kore-eda (Japan)
Honourable Mention
Leila's Brothers – Saeed Roustaee (Iran)

Cinevision Award for Best International Emerging Film
Aftersun [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
– Charlotte Wells (UK)
Honourable Mention
War Pony – Riley Keough (USA)

CineRebels Award
Cook F**k Kill [+see also:
trailer
interview: Mira Fornay
film profile
]
– Mira Fornay (Czech Republic/Slovakia)

FIPRESCI Award
Elfriede Jelinek – Language Unleashed – Claudia Müller (Germany)

Bayern 2 and SZ Audience Award
Kiss My Wounds [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
– Hanna Doose (Germany)

CineMerit Award
Alba Rohrwacher

Bernd Burgemeister TV Movie Award
As Loud As You Can – Esther Bialas (Germany)
King of Stonks – Jan Bonny (Germany, series)

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