German producer Dorothe Beinemeier of Red Balloon Film has won the EUR25,000 Hamburg production award for international cinema co-productions at the 10th anniversary of the Hamburg Production Awards on September 30.
Beinemeier co-produced Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti’s Happy Holidays, about which the jury said: “It approaches all its characters with great empathy and grants us insights into a world where everyone is trapped.” The jury was comprised of
Happy Holidays won the prize for best screenplay at Venice’s Horizons section last month; Beinemeier’s further co-producer credits include Bruno Dumont’s The Empire and Ameer Fakher Eldin’s Yunan.
Furthermore, the EUR25,000 Hamburg production award for German Cinema Productions was presented to Neue Bioskop Film’s Dietmar Guntsche, Martin Rohe, and Svenja Vanhoefer, producers of Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg graduate Chiara Fleischhacker’s Vena. The film is making its world premiere at Filmfest Hamburg on October 1 and will be released by Weltkino in Germany on November 28.
Vena has also won the First Steps award for best feature-length film and the Michael Ballhaus award for the film’s DoP Lisa Jilg who had also graduated from the Filmakademie in Ludwigsburg.
An honourable mention went to Andrea Schutte and Dirk Decker of Tamtam Film for their production of Kerstin Polte’s episodic drama Highly Explosive (Blindganger). Highly Explosive, which was co-produced with Switzerland’s Catpics, has had its world premiere in the Filmfest’s Grosse Freiheit sidebar.
Two awards were also presented to German TV productions screening in the Filmfest’s Televisionen sidebar with cash prizes sponsored by the Film and Television Producers’ Rights Association (VFF).
The EUR25,000 prize for the best TV film went to Bernd von Fehrn and Rene Jamm of Warner Bros Germany who had partnered with Berlin-based producers Roxana Richters and Alexander Wadouh of Chromosom Film on Simon Ostermann’s Von Uns Wird Es Keiner Sein, tackling the issue of suicide.
Turbokultur’s Martin Danaisch and David Hadda took home the EUR10,000 special prize for serial formats for their production of the ZDF comedy drama series Deadlines, directed by Sonja Heiss.
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