One award and two fur­ther nom­i­na­tions for the DFFB: Ger­man Short Film Award 2025

Journal,

On 20 Novem­ber 2025, Min­is­ter of State for Cul­ture and Media Wol­fram Weimer will present the Ger­man Short Film Award in Ham­burg. We are delight­ed to have received one award and two fur­ther nom­i­na­tions that are still in the run­ning for a Gold­en Lola.

The Ger­man Short Film Award 2025 in the cat­e­go­ry Medi­um-Length Film (30 to 78 min­utes run­ning time) goes to GARNELIUS by direc­tor and screen­writer Julia Ketel­hut (P: Melvyn Zeyns and Jonas Nemela, C: Rocío Díaz Freire) – a work of sub­tle sym­bol­ism and emo­tion­al clar­i­ty. Karl, who can hard­ly bear his father’s absence, seeks close­ness in his rela­tion­ship with his broth­er David. When an inex­plic­a­ble event upsets the fam­i­ly order, the bound­aries between real­i­ty and metaphor become blurred. GARNELIUS tells with poet­ic pre­ci­sion of long­ing, belong­ing and the qui­et pow­er that lies in fam­i­ly break­downs.

In the fea­ture film cat­e­go­ry with a run­ning time of up to 15 min­utes, MOTHER IS A NATURAL SINNER by Hoda Taheri and Boris Hadži­ja is in the run­ning for the Ger­man Short Film Award 2025. The con­clu­sion of their acclaimed tril­o­gy is ded­i­cat­ed to a woman who is forced by an unex­pect­ed preg­nan­cy to ques­tion her ideas of fem­i­nin­i­ty and self-deter­mi­na­tion. With ten­der inti­ma­cy and ana­lyt­i­cal acu­ity, Taheri and Hadži­ja cre­ate a cin­e­mat­ic state­ment about the body, guilt and free­dom – and how con­trol can be trans­formed into self-empow­er­ment.

Also nom­i­nat­ed for the Ger­man Short Film Award 2025, in the cat­e­go­ry of fea­ture films between 15 and 30 min­utes in length, is ICEBERGS by direc­tor Car­los Pereira – a qui­et, deeply mov­ing work about lone­li­ness and the search for close­ness. Theo, 66, lives in a world that bare­ly touch­es him any­more. Between the steam of a ham­mam and the dark­ness of an old cin­e­ma, he search­es for moments of human con­nec­tion. Only his encounter with Ida brings move­ment to his rigid­i­ty. With great calm and emo­tion­al pre­ci­sion, ICEBERGS paints the por­trait of a man who is slow­ly learn­ing to feel again.

The Ger­man Short Film Award is the most impor­tant and most high­ly endowed award for short films in Ger­many. With this award, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment hon­ours film­mak­ers for their courage in pro­duc­ing artis­ti­cal­ly ambi­tious works in short for­mat and encour­ages them to con­tin­ue on this path.