Hamburger Producer Award
7. Oktober 2022
At the festive awards ceremony on 7 October 2022 at Besenbinder Hof, three Hamburg Producer Awards were awarded by Hamburg’s State Councillor for Culture Jana Schiedek. The award, which has been in existence since 2014, recognises the special achievements of German producers and film and television production companies. It is awarded in the competition categories “International Cinema Co-Productions”, “German Television Productions” and “German Cinema Productions” with prize money of 25,000 euros each. The special prize for serial formats was increased to 10,000 euros in the second year of the award.
The Hamburg Producers Award for International Cinema Co-Productions was given to the producers of Electric Sheep, Michael Reuter, Saar Yogev and Naomi Levari, for the international Slovak-Czech-German co-production Victim (director: Michal Blaško; screenplay: Michal Blaško, Jakub Medvecký). For the jury (Valeska Neu, Sales Manager; Nurhan Sekerci-Porst, Producer and Gabriele Czypionka, Agent), the debut film “shows in a very fine and differentiated production how difficult it is to follow the truth in the field of tension between the various interests and the associated manipulations of civil society, politics and the media.” The jury also awarded an honourable mention to the international co-production Holy Spider (director: Ali Abbasi, German co-producer: Sol Bondy, One Two Films). The film is a shocking illustration of the situation in Iran, which is contemptuous of women. The jury would like to express “solidarity and admiration for the courage of all women who are currently taking to the streets in Iran…”.
The Hamburg Producers Award for German Cinema Productions was won by the producers Tobias Walker and Philipp Worm (Walker + Worm Film) for the film Skin Deep (Director: Alex Schaad, Screenplay: Alex Schaad, Dimitri Schaad). For the jury (Mathias Bothor, photographer; Burhan Qurbani, director and Stefan Wulff, music producer), the film “explores another possibility, that of sharing: sharing the pain, transferring the soul, exchanging the body and feeling the world anew as if through different skin.” The prize money for both categories, amounting to 50,000 euros, is provided by the Ministry of Culture and Media.
The winner of the Hamburg Producers Award for German TV Production is producer Christian Popp (Producers at Work Film) for The Cape Town Miracle (director: Franziska Buch; screenplay: Christoph Silber). According to the jury (Volker Einrauch, scriptwriter, director and producer; Dayan Kodua, actress, author and publisher and Maike Rasch, scriptwriter), the production succeeded in “combining a world-historical event with the theme of women’s struggle for professional recognition in an exciting and entertaining way”. The prize money for this award of 25,000 euros is donated by the Verwertungsgesellschaft der Film- und Fernsehproduzenten (VFF), which also provides the prize money for the special prize for serial formats of 10,000 euros.
This year, this special prize was awarded to producer Christian Beetz (gebrüder beetz filmproduktion) for the production Reeperbahn Special Unit 65 (Director: Georg Tschurtschenthaler, Carsten Gutschmidt, Ina Kessebohm; Script: Ina Kessebohm, Georg Tschurtschenthaler, Christian Beetz). In the jury’s statement it says, among other things, “With the first images, the fascination that the Reeperbahn exerts on Hamburgers and people all over the world becomes clear. The two episodes we saw immediately made us want to see more”.
Hamburg’s State Councillor for Culture Jana Schiedek presented the Hamburg Producer Award on the evening after the Explorer Conference, which in its third edition dealt with the challenges and opportunities of producing in the digital age and in the near and distant future under the motto “Transformation of Systems”.
“With the Hamburg Producer Award, the city thanks the actors of the diverse producer landscape for their outstanding achievements. At the same time, the award is also intended as an incentive for their further work, which requires not only a lot of money, competence and talent, but also courage, determination and creative power. Whether light topics or heavy film – with every work new insights and views of the world are opened up to us, for which I can only thank all the nominees in their role as bridge-builders, content-makers and links to the German film industry,” says Jana Schiedek.
Festival director Albert Wiederspiel warmly congratulated the award winners. “With Skin Deep and Victim, two feature-length debuts were awarded, both production companies have taken responsibility and embarked on an exciting journey with their talents.”
Two award ceremonies already took place on Wednesday, 5 October. At the MICHEL Children and Youth Film Festival, the MICHEL jury selected the film Secret Summers by Christophe Barratier and presented it with the MICHEL Award worth 5,000 euros, provided by the Hamburgische Kulturstiftung and von Berlichingen & Partner Steuerberatungsgesellschaft. The jury based their decision on the convincing acting performance of the actresses, the appropriate musical background and the fact that it is not only a film that inspires the younger audience.
The jury of the Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival, consisting of actress Fritzi Haberland, director and screenwriter Eva Neymann and producer Farzad Pak, awarded the Scythian Deer Award, worth 2,000 USD, to Nikon Romanchenko and his film Leopolis Night in the category of best short film. Dima, Dmitry, Dmytro Glory to the Heroes by Clemens Poole was commended. Stop-Zemlia by Kateryna Gornostai, which screened out of competition at the MICHEL Festival, won in the best feature film category. The jury presented the Scythian Deer statuette and 3,000 USD. The jury gave an honourable mention to Pamfir by Dmytro Sukholytkiy-Sobchuk, which also screened in the FILMFEST HAMBURG programme.
Further FILMFEST HAMBURG awards will be handed over on 8 October before the closing film The Blue Caftan by Maryam Touzan.
