DOUGLAS SIRK AWARD
Since 1995, the Douglas Sirk Award has been presented at FILMFEST HAMBURG to personalities who have made a special contribution to film culture and the film industry. Clint Eastwood was the first to receive the statuette designed by Hamburg designer Georg Plum.
The award is named after Douglas Sirk, who was born Hans Detlef Sierck in Hamburg. He emigrated to the USA in 1937 and first tried his luck as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Sirk celebrated his first success as a director with the melodrama “Summer Storm”. In the following years he made other successful films, including “Written on the Wind”, “A Time to Love and a Time to Die” and “Imitation of Life”.
An actress who makes her characters human: FILMFEST HAMBURG awards this year’s Douglas Sirk Award to one of the currently most outstanding European actresses, Sandra Hüller. The award ceremony will take place on Saturday, 30 September, on the occasion of the German premiere of this year’s Goldene Palme winning film Anatomy of a Fall (France, 2023) by Justine Triet at CinemaxX Dammtor.
“We are very pleased to award one of the most important German actresses. Sandra Hüller masters the whole range of emotions and characteristics and thus lends special, unmistakable attributes to every role. On the screen as well as on the theatre stage. She combines the passionate, the transgressive, the comic, the mischievous and the casual. That is why we are particularly pleased to honour Sandra Hüller this year, as she is not only an outstanding actress, but also increasingly makes an important contribution to European film culture,” says festival director Albert Wiederspiel.
Previous winners:
Clint Eastwood (1995), Stephen Frears (1996), Jodie Foster (1997), Peter Weir (1998), Jim Jarmusch (1999), Wong Kar-Wai (2000), Majid Majidi (2001), Aki Kaurismäki (2002), Isabelle Huppert (2003), François Ozon (2004), Zentropa (2005), Gérard Depardieu (2006), David Cronenberg (2007), Atom Egoyan (2008), Julian Schnabel (2010), Andreas Dresen, Peter Rommel (2011), Kim Ki-duk (2012), Tilda Swinton (2013), Fatih Akin (2014), Catherine Deneuve (2015), Wim Wenders (2017), Jafar Panahi (2018), Nina Hoss (2019), Leos Carax (2021)
