70th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 1 – 6 May 2024
Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen goes to Chinese film
20 prizes worth a total of around 43,000 euros awarded
Further main prizes go to India and Sweden
On 5 May 2024, the prizes of the 70th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen were awarded in Oberhausen's Lichtburg Filmpalast. 20 prizes and numerous special mentions were awarded in four competitions. The three MuVi Awards were presented on Saturday, 4 May. The Festival awarded a total of around 43,000 euros in prize money.
International competition
The Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen, endowed with 8,000 euros and awarded in the International Competition, went this year to Chinese director Wang Zhiyi for his film Chūn Èr shí sān (Spring 23), the story of a young man who, after his parents' funeral, tries to buy fireworks for the 2023 Spring Festival when fireworks are banned. “For being able to be both humanistic and subtly political, for its precise cinematography and editing, for its mixture of tragedy and humour,” stated the International Jury. The Fipresci Jury of International Film Critics also awarded its prize to this film.
The Principal Prize of the International Jury, endowed with 4,000 euros, went to The Many Interrupted Dreams of Mr Hemmady by Indian filmmaker Amit Dutta, in which the filmmaker uses a collection of matchboxes as a starting point and mini-portal to a dream world, creating “his own brand of ghostly animated magic. For him cinema becomes a way of travelling through culture, music and beauty”, the jury wrote in its statement.
The Jury of the NRW Ministry of Culture and Science awarded its main prize of 5,000 euros to the Swedish production On Hospitality - Layla al Attar and Hotel al Rasheed by Magnus Bärtås and Behzad Khosravi-Noori, in which the Iraqi artist Layla Al-Attar returns from the dead to tell the story of how a Swedish company was commissioned by Saddam Hussein to build a luxury hotel in Baghdad for the 1983 summit meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement. “A voice from beyond and footsteps on the inlays of ideology take us into a narrative prism that allows us to understand the complexities of our present and the depths of power”, the jury stated.
German Competition
In the German Competition, the main prize of 5,000 euros went to Agnieszka Jurek for Vermessung der Tristesse (Measuring Sadness) an essay film in which the filmmaker mixes memories, archive footage, dreams and painful reality. “A moment and then another moment, sensations that lie like islands in the passage of time”, the jury wrote in its statement.
Marian Mayland won the 3sat Emerging Talent Award in the German competition, endowed with 2,500 euros, for Outside. In this film, a curator, an archivist, a gallery owner and a relative describe their relationship to an artist who posed as a Holocaust victim with an invented biography. “The case of the artist who pretended to be a victim of the Nazi regime is now returning in a new version. We believe that the discourse triggered by this story should be given the opportunity to be continued in the programme of public television”, the jury wrote in its statement.
NRW Competition
In the NRW Competition, the first prize of 1,000 euros went to the feature film Bei Gino (At Gino’s) by Christoph Otto. “An aimless night in a Cologne bar. New and old acquaintances, anecdotes and lots of wine accompany the protagonist in her quest for something undefined. The camera also searches for its images and unfolds a social reference space with subtle humour", the jury stated.
Children's and Youth Film Competition
The Children's Jury honoured the French animation Frite sans maillot (Noodles au naturel) by Matteo Salanave Piazza in the Children's and Youth Film Competition with its prize of 1,000 euros, donated by WBO Oberhausen. A young boy realises just before swimming lessons that he has forgotten his swimming trunks and must quickly find a solution. The Youth Jury Prize, also endowed with 1,000 euros and donated by the Rotary Club Oberhausen, went to the American production Beyond Farewell by Jackie Shijie Xing, in which an AI engineer fights her grief for her deceased friend with work until, to her surprise, she sees the deceased through new AR glasses.
The complete list of all award-winning films can be downloaded here as a PDF.
A selection of award-winning films will be shown at the Oberhausen Lichtburg Filmpalast on Monday, 6 May 2024 at 5 pm.
From Monday, 6 May at 8 pm to Tuesday, 7 May at 8 pm CET, all award-winning films will be available online at www.kurzfilmtage.de; access is free with registration.
The complete list of all award winners and printable stills will be available online in the press section of www.kurzfilmtage.de from Monday, 6 May.
Oberhausen, 5 May 2024
Press contact: Sabine Niewalda, phone +49 (0)208 825-3073, niewalda(at)kurzfilmtage.de