Editor

This Saturday evening, the Award Ceremony of the 42nd FILMSCHOOLFEST MUNICH brought the festival to a close. The jury presented the festival’s top award to the moving short film THE VOICE OF OTHERS (France) by Fatima Kaci. The Audience Award went to THE FUSE by Kevin Haefelin (USA). 

The festival jury (Aslı Özge, Younès Ben Slimane, Aida Begović, Mathias Barkhausen), the audience, and three other juries chose the award-winners from among 40 films this year. Ten awards — with a total value of almost 40,000 euros — were presented. The films in the 2023 international competition were submitted by 35 film schools and were produced in 26 countries around the world. 

“It’s been an emotional week, a week of empathy, in which young filmmakers presented their works at the University of Television and Film Munich. We laughed, we cried, and together we discussed tragic and important subjects. For six days, we were able to provide an open space for dialogue that in many places seems so difficult to achieve — and for that I’m deeply grateful to the artists, our open-minded audience, and the festival team,” said festival director Christoph Gröner. 

The festival was held at the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF), where a total of 4.000 people attended the ten festival programs, four special programs, two school screenings, two master classes and workshops in the nearly sold-out Audimax. For the very first time, there were also Spanish- and French-language programs, which were well received. The festival lounge, also at the HFF, was a popular meeting place for the numerous international guests and film students. 

  
The award-winners 

At this year’s Filmschoolfest, the short Israeli film THE BOY received two awards. This film, which depicts the life of a farmer and his son next to the Gaza Strip, attracted a great deal of attention, and not just because of its topical subject matter. Its director, Yahav Winner, was killed in the attack by Hamas on October 7. In a moving Q&A at the film screening, Winner’s widow Shaylee Atary, lead actor Nimrod Peleg, cinematographer Ben Peled, and David Noy (head of the Film Department at the Minshar School of Art, Israel) took turns speaking. The latter emphasized: “This is not a memorial screening, and this is not a eulogy, but rather a celebration of Yahav and his work, his art, his life. He was such a charismatic, good-hearted, compassionate person, as you will see in [his] film.” 

THE VOICE OF OTHERS by Fatima Kaci (La Fémis, France) was presented the VFF Young Talent Award for best film by the festival jury. This award of 10,000 euros is sponsored by the Verwertungsgesellschaft der Film- und Fernsehproduzenten (VFF). Day by day in France, a Tunisian interpreter named Rim witnesses how a careless answer to skeptical questions can bury a person’s hope for a better life. The bureaucratic harshness of asylum proceedings gradually wears her down. The jury said: “The director is in full command of her cinematic tools, which she uses to translate her script into an intensely engaging film.” 

The festival jury also presented the ARRI Award for best documentary (consisting of non-cash benefits), sponsored by ARRI, a long-established, Munich-based company. The award went to Jesús Lacorte for TO DIE BEFORE DYING (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Spain). In a village in the Extremadura region of Spain, a devout woman worries about her son as he trains to become a bullfighter. The jury says: “The filmmaker finds moments and crafts striking images in which tradition and modernity are in conflict, as a young man searches for a path toward his uncertain future.” 

The award for best screenplay (2,000 euros, sponsored by Angela Waldleitner) went to screenwriter and director Yahav Winner for THE BOY (Minshar School of Art, Israel). The jury says: “This film alarms us urgently to how war becomes our everyday reality. We deeply regret that he is unable to be here to celebrate his great achievement.” 

The Animation Award (5,000 euros) was sponsored by Adobe for the first time this year. The winner is the short film ESSAY FOR THE MEMORY by Denise Vanesa Chirich Barreira (Facultad de Diseño y Urbanismo UBA, Argentina). Against the backdrop of recollections by the victims of the Argentinian military dictatorship, it explores the question of where memories that cannot be captured in a photograph are preserved. The jury commended the film “for combining two genres, animation and documentary, as well as combining the past and the present, the political and the personal, and building collective memory — resisting erasure.” 

This year’s Panther Prize for the best production of a film from a European university goes to Alisa Frischholz for THE OTHER END OF THE STREET by Kálmán Nagy (Film Academy Vienna, Austria, Hungary). The prize consists of non-cash benefits worth 5,000 euros. An argument between children causes their fathers to take a good look at themselves. The latent tension in this confrontation, which is also one between social classes, leads to a moral dilemma. The jury was impressed by the film’s “sharp analysis of the human condition... . [This film] paints a portrait of a group of people pushed to their limits, generating a spiraling tension.” 

This year’s Student Camera Award (2,000 euros, sponsored by Film & TV Kamera magazine) goes to TODAY’S SUNLIGHT FALLS WEAKLY ON YOU and thus to cinematographer Song Zhi Yi (LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore), who collaborated with director Lim Yuzheng on this film. A strange veil has settled over the life of a lonely woman, taking the audience on a shadowy journey of reflection on loss and transience. The jury commended the cinematographer “for reflecting the emotional condition of his character in hypnotizing black-and-white imagery, which serves the poetic language of the film.” 

ARTE viewers will soon be able to enjoy THIS WILL NOT BE A FESTIVAL FILM by Julia Orlik (The Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź, Poland), which received the ARTE Award for best short film. THE ARTE jury (Barbara Häbe and Laurence Rilly) explained its choice as follows: “This autobiographical film takes a sensitive and accurate look at the transitional period that studying represents.” 

The jury presenting the 2,500-euro Wolfgang Längsfeld Award (Alica Bednáriková, Laura Lybaschenko, Marco Serafini) in memory of the festival’s founder, HFF professor Wolfgang Längsfeld, honors the most original film screened at the festival. For 2023, it has chosen THE LOAD by Miranda Namicheishvili (Shota Rustaveli Film and Theatre / Tbilisi State University, Georgia). According to the jury, the film stood out “not just for its visual style and innovative narrative approach, but also for its touching story.” The award is sponsored by the Freundeskreis Wolfgang Längsfeld e.V..

The Prix Interculturel (2,000 euros, sponsored by the Interfilm Academy) went to THE BOY by Yahav Winner (Minshar School of Art, Israel). The jury (Eckart Bruchner, Christine Weissbarth, Natalia Putintseva) was impressed by how the film “depicts this (generational) conflict in images that are emphatically calm.” 

THE FUSE by Kevin Haefelin (Columbia University, USA) was the film that most impressed the audience, who had until 11:00 on Saturday morning to vote for the Audience Award. This honor, which includes 1,500 euros, is sponsored by the Freundeskreis Filmfest München e.V..

In addition, the FILMSCHOOLFEST MUNICH jury gave honorable mention to Benjamin Kodboel’s short documentary CADÁVER (National Film and Television School, United Kingdom). The jury said: “This film describes the picturesque Mediterranean as what it is for so many: a grave. The director captures the subject in clear visuals with great empathy and tact.” 

In the special competition for the Climate Clips Award (sponsored by the Nagelschneider Foundation), the prizes had been awarded at the opening ceremony. The top prize of 3,000 euros went to Alina Saltheim, Céline Ahlbrecht and Ins Meyer from Germany for JUST IN CASE. The 2nd prize (2,000 euros) was awarded to Francesco S. Zecchin from Austria for NO ROOM. The 3rd prize (1,000 euros) went to WHAT DO YOU DO? by Jonas Becher from Germany. 


The complete jury statements can be found here.