This anniver­sary edi­tion of the Berli­nale will take place from 20.2.–1.3.2020, and the DFFB will be rep­re­sent­ed at the fes­ti­val by two films:

The fea­ture film A FISH SWIMMING UPSIDE DOWN (director/​screenwriter: Eliza Petko­va; cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er: Con­stanze Schmitt; pro­duc­er: Kon­stan­tin Kann) will be screened in the 21st Per­spek­tive Deutsches Kino, and the doc­u­men­tary film BLUE EYES AND COLORFUL MY DRESS from Poli­na Gumiela will be screened in the 43rd Gen­er­a­tion.

Both films are grad­u­a­tion films and will be cel­e­brat­ing their world pre­mieres at the Berli­nale.

BLUE EYES AND COLORFUL MY DRESS is nom­i­nat­ed twice: for the Crys­tal Bear for the Best Film and for the Grand Prix of the Gen­er­a­tion Kplus Inter­na­tion­al Jury for the Best Film.

A FISH SWIMMING UPSIDE DOWN is nom­i­nat­ed for the Com­pass Per­spec­tive Award and the Hein­er Carow Award from the DEFA foun­da­tion.

Morevo­er, the first fea­ture NAKED ANIMALS from our alum­na Melanie Waelde will be screened in the new­ly cre­at­ed Encoun­ters sec­tion. The fea­ture film is pro­duced by CZAR Film, and the screen­play was the writer and director’s DFFB grad­u­a­tion project.

We are keep­ing our fin­gers crossed for all films and are look­ing for­ward to an excit­ing fes­ti­val!

We are pleased to announce that three DFFB films will be screened at the most impor­tant fes­ti­vals in Jan­u­ary :

The 41st Film­fes­ti­val Max Ophüls Preis—the most impor­tant fes­ti­val for young Ger­man-speak­ing filmmakers—will take place dur­ing 20–26 Jan­u­ary, 2020, in Saar­brück­en. JIYAN (director/​screenwriter: Sühey­la Schwenk; cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er: Flo­ri­an Wurz­er; pro­duc­er: Sara Fazi­lat, Rox­ana Richters) will screen in the fea­ture film com­pe­ti­tion and LAND OF GLORY (direc­tor: Bor­bála Nagy; screen­writer: Bor­bála Nagy, Judit Anna Bán­házi, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er: Moritz Friese, pro­duc­er: Mar­gari­ta Amine­va) will screen in the medi­um-length com­pe­ti­tion.

DFFB Alum­ni Anna Koch and Julia Lemke will also have their debut movie GLITZER & STAUB screend in the documan­tary com­pe­ti­tion and the debut movie GIRAFFE by Alum­na Anna Sofie Hart­mann in the Watch­list sec­tion.

Next up is the 49th Inter­na­tionalem Film­fes­ti­val Rot­ter­dam (IFFR), which takes place dur­ing 22 January–2 Feb­ru­ary, 2020. IFFR is one of the most impor­tant film fes­ti­vals in Europe and the largest in Hol­land. In the Bright Future Com­pe­ti­tion, the film SEBASTIAN SPRINGT ÜBER GELÄNDER (director/​screenwriter: Cey­lan Ata­man-Checa; cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er: Albrecht von Grün­hagen; pro­duc­er: Jörg Daniel, Övünc Güvenisik, Simona Kos­to­va, Cey­lan Ata­man-Checa) will have its world pre­miere.

We warm­ly con­grat­u­late all the film teams. We are already look­ing for­ward to the new decade, which could not have start­ed in a bet­ter way!

At the Tallinn Black Nights Film Fes­ti­val, DFFB alum­nus and direc­tor Gre­gor Božič won the award for the best first fea­ture film with his grad­u­a­tion film STORIES FROM THE CHESTNUT WOODS!

The jury state­ment: In times of new for­mats, plat­forms and rush rhythm, it is so great to give this award to a film that holds the old torch of cin­e­ma itself. With pow­er­ful sense of real­i­ty with mag­ic, poet­ry and cru­el­ty; this tale stands for the dig­ni­ty of wait­ing for death while life pass­es by in such a strong way. Beau­ti­ful­ly shot and edit­ed, with a great sense of com­mu­nion with the peo­ple, land­scape, envi­ron­ment and the top­ic. It was like enjoy­ing a nice and hum­ble meal from the coun­try­side: the film left us the taste of chest­nuts.

Source: https://​poff​.ee/​e​n​/​a​w​a​r​d​s​-​o​f​-​t​h​e​-​2​3​r​d​-​t​a​l​l​i​n​n​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​n​i​g​h​t​s​-​f​i​l​m​-​f​e​s​t​i​v​al/

The award came with a €5000 prize, which will be divid­ed between the direc­tor and the film‘s pro­duc­er Mari­na Gumzi.

We warm­ly con­grat­u­late Gre­gor and the whole team!

The Ger­man Film and Tele­vi­sion Acad­e­my Berlin is delight­ed to announce that two DFFB stu­dents received awards at the 20th FIRST STEPS AWARDS, which were pre­sent­ed yes­ter­day evening on the stage of the The­ater des West­ens:

Author Jacob Haupt­mann received the FIRST STEPS SCREENPLAY PRIZE, which came with a €10,000 prize, for his screen­play ZEIT DER MONSTER. Oliv­er Ziegen­balg praised Hauptmann’s script in a pas­sion­ate speech on behalf of the jury, which also includ­ed Lau­ra Lack­mann, and Hei­de Schwo­chow: “In a fever­ish and fre­net­ic style, ZEIT DER MONSTER uses the exam­ple of an African infir­mary to tell the sto­ry of an entire nation slid­ing into the ter­ri­ble night­mare of war.”

Pro­duc­er Romana Janik received the NO FEAR AWARD for her work on the fea­ture film 1986 (direc­tor: Lothar Her­zog). The jury acclaimed Janik for her courage in tak­ing the risk to shoot a fea­ture film, detail­ing ille­gal trans­ports from the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed Cher­nobyl zone, under chal­leng­ing con­di­tions in Belarus. The jury, con­sist­ing of Son­ja Heiss, Jochen Laube, Kat­ja Nicode­mus, Son­ja Rom and Kost­ja Ull­mann, con­clud­ed: “We would all like to shoot with this pro­duc­er!”

We warm­ly con­grat­u­late our two win­ners!

Pho­to: © Event­press /​ Har­ald Fuhr

Two alum­ni of our SERIAL EYES pro­gramme have been fea­tured in an arti­cle on the renowned indus­try web­site SCREEN DAILY (a branch of the British SCREEN INTERNATIONAL). Judit Ban­hazi from Hun­gary and Ivan Kneže­vić from Ser­bia are two of the five up-and-com­ing tal­ent­ed screen­writ­ers from South­east Europe.

“Germany’s lead­ing film and TV school, Berlin DFFB, offers Ser­i­al Eyes, a post­grad­u­ate train­ing pro­gramme for tele­vi­sion writ­ers and pro­duc­ers that is wide­ly regard­ed as the most use­ful such plat­form in Europe.”

Ben­jamin Har­ris, head of pro­gramme for SERIAL EYES, explains the unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of these South­east Euro­pean authors:

“We’ve been very lucky to have had great young tal­ents from the [South­east Europe] region in almost every train­ing cycle. There are dif­fer­ent sen­si­bil­i­ties from these writ­ers than what we are used to from West­ern Euro­pean writ­ers. For exam­ple, even though many of our writ­ers are too young to have expe­ri­enced Com­mu­nism per se, they were often there for the upheavals and immense change that were the 1990s, or are now expe­ri­enc­ing the after­math of those tran­si­tion­al years.”

“In the writ­ing there is often an open­ness for change and tran­si­tion, but with a cer­tain play­ful­ness,” he con­tin­ues. “The writ­ers are more will­ing to explore new things, new ideas, and even old issues with a new set of eyes. The sto­ries show an aware­ness of the seri­ous­ness of the social real­i­ties of their own cul­tures – crime, polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion, social inequal­i­ty – but these themes are often dealt with in unex­pect­ed ways. There is less inhi­bi­tion to mix gen­res and tones and stark, gris­ly dra­ma exists side by side with almost absur­dist com­e­dy.”

The arti­cle can be read in its entire­ty here.

The 20th First First Steps Awards will be pre­sent­ed on Sep­tem­ber 9, 2019, and the DFFB is delight­ed to have five nom­i­na­tions for these cov­et­ed awards:

Direc­tor Susanne Hein­rich’s fea­ture film DAS MELANCHOLISCHE MÄDCHEN has been nom­i­nat­ed for the best fea­ture-length film, which comes with a €25,000 prize.

Direc­tor Lothar Her­zog’s fea­ture film 1986 has also been nom­i­nat­ed in the same cat­e­go­ry.

Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Agnesh Pakoz­di is nom­i­nat­ed for the MICHAEL BALLHAUS PRIZE, which comes with a €10,000 prize, for her work on DAS MELANCHOLISCHE MÄDCHEN.

Pro­duc­er Romana Janik is nom­i­nat­ed for the NO FEAR AWARD, which comes with a €10,000 prize, for her work on the film 1986.

And final­ly, Jacob Haupt­mann’s screen­play ZEIT DER MONSTER is nom­i­nat­ed for the FIRST STEPS SCREENPLAY PRIZE, which comes with a €10,000 prize.

About the films/​screenplay

DAS MELANCHOLISCHE MÄDCHEN

A girl roams through the city look­ing for a place to sleep. Along the way she meets young moth­ers who cel­e­brate moth­er­hood reli­gious­ly, goes home with an absti­nent exis­ten­tial­ist for whom sex is “just anoth­er mar­ket”, and waits for the end of cap­i­tal­ism in a drag bar. Her attempt to write a book doesn’t make it beyond the first sen­tence of the sec­ond chap­ter, and she finds no space between art gal­leries, yoga stu­dios, and the beds of strangers. Instead of try­ing to fit in, she starts per­ceiv­ing her depres­sion as a polit­i­cal issue. Through 15 of the girl’s humor­ous encoun­ters, DAS MELANCHOLISCHE MÄDCHEN, explores our post-mod­ern soci­ety between pre­car­i­ty and self-mar­ket­ing, ser­i­al monogamy and neo-spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, dis­il­lu­sion­ment and the pres­sure to be hap­py. Susanne Heinrich’s debut film brings togeth­er pop and the­o­ry, fem­i­nism and humour, and gives you tons of quotes you’ll want to see on adver­tis­ing bill­boards in neon let­ters.

1986

Ele­na is a stu­dent in Min­sk, Belarus. She has a pas­sion­ate but increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with her boyfriend Vic­tor. When her father is sud­den­ly arrest­ed, she has to con­tin­ue his ille­gal busi­ness­es. In order to make deals for him, she must repeat­ed­ly dri­ve into the ‘for­bid­den zone’ of Tch­er­nobyl. She is fas­ci­nat­ed by the zone’s decep­tive beauty—but soon her life seems con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by a destruc­tive force…

ZEIT DER MONSTER

It’s the sum­mer of 1914, just before the begin­ning of the First World War. Elsa (19), a nurse with a strict Calvin­ist upbring­ing, takes a posi­tion in a remote hos­pi­tal ward in the Ger­man colony of Cameroon. While the lead­ing physi­cian Alexan­der (37), with Elsa’s help, rig­or­ous­ly pur­sues his research to cre­ate a drug against nar­colep­sy, his wife Lydia (28) strug­gles to find mean­ing in her life. When Elsa dis­cov­ers sev­er­al poi­soned ani­mals in the infir­mary, the com­man­der of the near­est police force begins to inves­ti­gate the case with bru­tal meth­ods. The irrup­tion of vio­lence caus­es the already frag­ile struc­ture of the infir­mary to col­lapse and brings repressed desires to the sur­face, which plunges Elsa’s ordered world view into chaos.