Award winners of the 65th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

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Awards of the International Competition

Prizes awarded by the International Jury

Members of the International Jury:
Clarissa Chikiamco (Singapore), Javier H. Estrada (Spain), Jörg Heiser (Germany), Adina Pintilie (Romania), Salla Tykkä (Finland)

Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen
8,000 Euros

I Got My Things and Left
Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo
Rwanda/Switzerland 2018, 22 min. 23 sec., colour

Statement:
In the spirit of Oberhausen Film Festival's concept – to acknowledge and support innovative, unconventional works, which challenge the boundaries of cinema as a medium – we decided to award the Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen to a film of impressive freedom and power, both conceptually and emotionally.
Inspired by the free spirit of Dambudzo Marechera – an iconoclast, boundary-crossing key figure of African literature – a mourning process becomes a trigger for self-reflection and transformation. Shifting elegantly between language registers – from poetry to performance, from music to personal diary, from reality to its cinematic interpretation – this profound meditation on loss and transience becomes a celebration of inner freedom, both on a human level and of cinema as a language.


Principal Prize
4,000 Euros

ZOMBIES
Baloji
Belgium/DR Congo 2019, 14 min. 50 sec., colour

Statement:
A 14-minute music thriller about digital zombification set in Kinshasa, Congo, addressing the emotional and social cost of social media, yet celebrating the city’s vibrant subculture of dance music and flamboyant, surreal dressing-up in glorious images. Moving from nightclub to hair salon to plastic-clogged river becomes a stunning journey of metamorphosis, to the soundtrack of director Baloji’s futuristic afro beats. A triumph wrought from difficulty.


e-flux Prize
3,000 Euros
For an exceptional film and video work which reshapes the poetic and electric potential of moving images in the age of planetary circulation of information.

L’Étoile de mer
Maya Schweizer
Germany 2019, 11 min., colour and b/w

Statement:
Adeptly collaging clips and sounds from other films with text and aquatic footage, this film about film questions the slipperiness of images, which can be both familiar and enigmatic.


Special Mention

IO
Art Union Marmelade
Russia 2018, 20 min. 10 sec., colour

Statement:
For its outstanding energy, an honest and sharp portrait of the complexities of young love, and its excellent and imaginative use of the cinematic language.

 

Jury of the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia

Members of the Jury:
Otaigo Beryl Magoko (Kenya), Werner Ružicka (Germany), Bernd Schoch (Germany), Ulrike Sprenger (Germany), Mareike Wegener (Germany)

1st Prize
5,000 Euros

Elvis: Strung Out
Mark Oliver
Canada 2018, 4 min. 33 sec., colour

Statement:
We see the singer exerting himself on stage, we hear the sound recording of the spoken, tired self-justification of a person constantly under observation and drugs – Mark Oliver's hypnotizing bass musically drives us from crash to ecstasy. The film makes Elvis compete against Elvis, and manages with minimal means to make the audience's lust for humiliation and deification collide, thus deconstructing the pop cultural clichés around the King. But the myth remains.


2nd Prize
3,000 Euros

IO
Art Union Marmelade
Russia 2018, 20 min. 10 sec., colour

Statement:
Three directors portray three characters in Saint Petersburg, their lives full of intensity and aggression. The camera fragments figures and spaces, pushes the bodies off screen, limits their possibilities for action. Only violence seems to lead from one room to another, seems to be able to connect the rooms, and in the end even to question the film fiction itself. The film succeeds in describing a precise state; it is a syndrome of a present.


Special Mention

THE SOUND DRIFTS
Stefano Canapa
France 2019, 8 min. 20 sec., b/w

Statement:
In a congenial collaboration, Stefano Canapa transfers the sonic magnetic tape adaptations of the avant-garde composer Jerôme Noetinger to analogue film material, thus making the invisible visible and presenting us with a cinematographic experience.

 

The International Critics’ Prize (FIPRESCI Prize)

Members of the Jury:
Marco Grosoli (Italy), Françoise Ricard (France), Irina Trocan (Romania)

Student Bodies
Ho Rui An
Singapore 2019, 26 min. 30 sec., colour

Statement:
An intellectually elaborate short film on East Asia’s historical relations with the Western world where the filmmaker reframes architecture, monuments and fragments of film so as to both visualize the topic at hand and makes us see them with new eyes.

 

Prize of the Ecumenical Jury
1,500 Euros

Members of the Jury:
Alexander Bothe (Germany), Friedrich Brandi (Germany), Dénes Nagy (Hungary), Christine Ris (Switzerland)


NoirBLUE – Deslocamentos de uma dança
Ana Pi
France/Brazil 2018, 27 min., colour

Statement:
The radiance of the sky that transcends all borders, the longing and melancholy of the space of night and day, and everything in between, are narrated by the bright blue; the physical challenge, beauty, elegance and suppression of the transformations by the blue dance; identity, home, home and tears by the voice from the blue depth of the heart. The film NoirBLUE - Deslocamentos de uma dança varies the poetic engagement with differences and variabilities by the phrase "I'm from all these places", never moralising, always crossing bridges and connecting: leave the pain and injury of your ancestors behind, hope for the blessing of those who come after you; the blueness of love will transcend all boundaries when we are what we will be.


Special Mention

amelina
Rubén Guzmán
Argentina 2018, 25 min. 32 sec., colour

Statement:
The deeper Amelina "Coca" San Martín gets on her way through and look at life, the more light and darkness and mountains and heritage and gentleness she discovers. But interpreting would be limiting, explaining would be blurring, instead of preserving what has been given: "What it means? We will never know." Full of dignity and tranquility, the film amelina engages with a history thousands of years old and rich in years, with the past in the present, with the dignity of man in the portrait of a woman, with the dignity of a life in view of the art of the ancestors. A film about how we came into being, how small our life is – and therefore so big.

 

ZONTA Prize
1,000 Euros
to a female filmmaker in the International or German Competition

ALGO-RHYTHM
Manu Luksch
UK/Senegal 2018, 13 min. 56 sec., colour

Statement:
Our most vulnerable affects are queried and researched using convenient smartphone apps. And used for automated propaganda campaigns and algorhythmic electioneering such as in the elections in the USA, Kenya and Nigeria and the "Brexit" referendum to enforce authoritarian, anti-democratic policies.
Data dust, rushing data points: The film's photogrammatic method finds convincing images for the fine-meshed global system of voluntarily given, retrievable data of our everyday algorithm use. And it pulls us along in the sound of a local critical music scene. Developed and staged as a fast-paced hip-hop comedy with artists and stars of the Senegalese rap scene, this year's Zonta Prize goes to Manu Luksch for her film ALGO-RHYTHM.

 

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Awards of the German Competition

Members of the Jury of the German Competition:
Kathrin Becker (Deutschland), Stefan Butzmühlen (Deutschland), Ekkehard Knörer (Deutschland)


Prize for the best contribution to the German Competition
5,000 Euros

ma nouvelle vie européenne
Abou Bakar Sidibé/Moritz Siebert
Germany 2019, 22 min. 19 sec., colour

Statement:
Abou flees from Mali and comes to Germany. ma nouvelle vie européenne reports on the worlds that lie between coming and arriving and on the fact that a home is far from being a new home. A film that doesn't promise itself and us too much: neither in terms of closeness and empathy nor in the certainty that everything will turn out well. But how he turns the camera into a medium of reflection and self-assertion in an existential emergency situation is not only a political act, but also and above all an admirable cinematic one.
 

3sat Promotional Award
2,500 Euros
For a contribution with a particularly innovative approach.
In addition the award includes a buying option on the awarded work to be broadcast on 3sat.

Which Way to the West
Kristina Kilian
Germany 2019, 36 min. 17 sec., colour

Statement:
A film about a filmmaker who makes a film about her engagement with Godard's "Allemagne Neuf Zero": It sounds quite "meta, meta, meta" (to quote Which Way to the West itself). It is, too, quite meta, but in interlacing homage, self-doubt, and a study of film and Germany, the film proves to be quite funny and a search that really leads into the open. One of Which Way to the West's great strengths is that the film, despite the meta, doesn't want to be smart above all else. That's what makes it smart.


Special Mentions

A Return
James Edmonds
Germany 2018, 6 min., colour

Statement:
There is surf on the soundtrack, but the 16 mm images are also surging: fast, sometimes ghostly, sometimes in overlays, then simple and clear. Windows, plants, a surging stream of forms whose rhythms have rocked us.


Ada Kaleh
Helena Wittmann
Germany 2018, 14 min. 23 sec., colour

Statement:
It may not be quite clear who dreams of what here, and why in Chinese: but the precision of the daydreams in closed rooms and the camera pans that open the senses, with images from inside and sounds from outside, create the most beautiful floating states.

 


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Awards of the 11th NRW Competition

Members of the Jury:
Gunter Deller (Frankfurt), Kathrin Häger (Cologne), Marita Quaas (Cologne)


Prize for the best contribution to the NRW Competition
1,000 Euros
sponsored by NRW.Bank

RIAFN
Hannes Lang
Germany 2019, 30 min., colour

Statement:
What a prologue offered by the initial constricted camera movement into a dark underpass. As if swallowed by an oral cavity, we are spat out again by the magnificent cinemascope images into the green expanse of the Alps. This spatial experience is juxtaposed with a vocal and acoustic resonance space in which the isolated calls of the shepherds and the ringing of the cowbells condense into a fantastic conversation between man, nature and cattle. With impressive precision and rhythm, Hannes Lang makes the incomprehensible tangible to the eyes in RIAFN – in images that literally "cry out" for the big screen.


Promotional Award of the NRW Competition
500 Euros
sponsored by NRW.Bank

O Catador sem Cabeça
Igor Shin Moromisato
Germany 2018, 14 min. 30  Sec., colour

Statement:
This cinematic narrator cultivates a dream that feeds on desires, remorse and longing. Somnambulistic, pale at first, then more and more contoured, the animation about the "headless gatherer" is projected onto nocturnal cityscapes, their passers-by and their shady sides. The autobiographical metropolitan experiences skip across levels of time and images with a lightness that testifies to the refinement and complexity of their fusion. Igor Shin Moromisato sends his O Catador sem Cabeça, composed of Brazilian and Japanese cultural myths, into a splendidly colourful nocturnal atmosphere of which we would like to see more in the future.


Special Mention

El Peso del Oro
Yves-Maurice Itzek, Milosz Zmiejewski, Oscar Diaz
Germany 2019, 30 min. 50  sec., colour

Statement:
Our Special Mention goes to an international team production that conveys a physical experience shot under life-threatening conditions. For a handful of gold dust, the Colombian workers toil under extremely hard conditions underground. Droning drills, sweat and the claustrophobic narrowness of the shafts: El Peso del Oro follows the trail of gold and digs deep into the exploitation of body and nature. Yves-Maurice Itzek, Milosz Zmiejewski and Oscar Diaz literally move down to the lowest end of the capitalist profit chain, and thus to the root of a global problem. The weight of gold – it cannot be measured in ounces.

 

Prize of the WDR Westart Audience Jury
750 Euros, sponsored by WDR Westart

MIDAS oder die schwarze Leinwand
(MIDAS or the Black Screen)
Hannah Dörr
Germany 2019, 15 min., colour

Statement:
In addition to the topicality and relevance of its content, this imaginative short film impresses most with its extraordinary scenery. Actors act between two-dimensional paper backdrops as if on a surreal stage. Tableau-like scenes that break with our digital viewing habits. A clever, humorous, artistic and whimsical realisation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's eponymous play: great set, outstanding actors and a story that couldn't be more topical.

 

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Awards of the 42st Children's and Youth Film Competition


Prize of the Children's Jury
1,000 Euros, sponsored by Wirtschaftsbetriebe Oberhausen

Members of the Jury:
Sabi Etemovski, Joel Hellwig, Leon Jason Reuschenbach, Collin Schindler, Gina-Marie Wieczorek

Aarambh
(The Beginning)
Sandeep Kumar Verma
India 2018, 20 min., colour

Statement:
Our winning film is about a question that we have all already asked ourselves. Namely what happens after death. The film tells a lot about this and is always exciting. Although the story isn't always cheerful, the film also has a lot of funny parts. And it's well acted. Because we find the theme of the movie very sad, but also totally important, we award our prize to Sandeep Kumar Verma for Aarambh.

 

evo Promotional Award of the Children's Jury
1,000 Euros, sponsored by Energieversorgung Oberhausen AG (evo)

De Jonge Jagers
(Young Hunters)
Iris Grob
Netherlands 2018,  17 min. 6 sec., colour

Statement:
We especially liked our winning film because it explained so much. In the film we learned where our food comes from. We all like to eat meat, but the animals are kept in cages and that's not really right. Some scenes in the film were a bit disgusting, but also super exciting. Furthermore, it was interesting to see the family in the movie.


Special Mention

Kosh bol
(The Farewell)
Karash Janyshov
Kyrgyzstan 2018, 15 min., b/w

Statement:
Our Special Mention goes to a film that we found rather sad at first. It's about two boys who aren't doing well at all. That's why we found it so great that in the end they become friends and even run away together. We also liked the fact that the movie is black and white. Because that fits well with the story.

 

Prize of the Youth Jury
1,000 Euros, sponsored by the Rotary Club Oberhausen

Members of the Jury:
Sophie Ducrot, Sara Kovac, Maurice Turnbach, Antonia Reinecke, Hannah Marlene Spriesterbach


Dunk
Sophie Martin
France 2018, 22 min. 48 sec., colour

Statement:
It wasn't easy for us to decide which film to award our prize to, because we were impressed by all the films we saw. In the end, we decided on a film in which everything was just right and which we could have watched for much, much longer. But the fact that the film manages to tell a story which would also fill an hour and a half in 20 minutes impressed us a lot.
The film combines many themes: fake friends, discrimination and prejudice, having to prove oneself in a group and above all sadness. The film tells us that after a loss you have to be strong and deal with your grief in scenes many of which have stuck with us. We absolutely believed the emotions of the great main actress and were able to put ourselves even better into the story.
Moreover, we find it just the right signal to award a movie in which girls are the heroines! Because we found it impressive, moving and almost magical, we award the prize of the International Youth Film Competition to Dunk by Sophie Martin.


Special Mention

Récit de soi
Géraldine Charpentier
Belgium 2018, 4 min. 53 sec., colour

Statement:
We award our special mention to a film that tells a very personal story, but finds a form that also lets us feel the emotions of the main character. The fact that the film is about a very complex topic is perfectly reflected in the animation style. The film tells about how much courage it takes to be different, which is an international issue, which we liked. Identifying neither as a woman nor as a man should be recognised as normality, but unfortunately it isn't. Because it touched us very much and we hope that with this special mention we can contribute to transgender acceptance, we award it to Récit de soi by Géraldine Charpentier.

 

ECFA Short Film Award

Members of the Jury:
Christian Exner (Deutschland), Elisa Giovanelli (Italien), Christoffer Olofsson (Schweden)

Bloeistraat 11
Nienke Deutz
Belgium/Netherlands 2018, 9 min. 41 sec., colour

Statement:
For a sensitive portrayal of the fragility of even the strongest bonds of childhood, reflected through a brilliant combination of animation styles, inventive set design and captivating storytelling; for clearly outlined, almost transparent characters and the illustration of intimate emotions and complex relationships, without shying away from the sharp and painful details and disturbing elements of coming of age experiences.

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