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”.
FILMFEST HAMBURG has suspended the ceremony for the Douglas Sirk Award due to allegations against the production surrounding working conditions during the shooting of the film Sparta (Austria, Germany, France, 2022), because the allegations would have overshadowed an award ceremony. The film was shown. Ulrich Seidl was a guest in Hamburg. The award will be presented to the Austrian director at the German premiere of his next film in Hamburg.
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)