Christian Petzold’s Berlinale competition film Barbara has received eight nominations for this year’s German Film Awards, known popularly as the Lolas, which will be presented in a gala ceremony at Berlin’s Friedrichstadtpalast on April 27.

The Schramm Film production received nominations in the categories for Feature Film, Screenplay, Direction, Lead Actor, Cinematography, Editing, Costume Design and Sound Design, although the members of the German Film Academy surprisingly decided to pass over Nina Hoss in the title role for a Lead Actress nod.

Anonymous, Roland Emmerich’s first film to be made in Germany for more than 20 years, and Andreas Dresen’s cancer drama Stopped On Track are hot on Barbara’s heels with seven nominations apiece – ranging from Female Lead (Steffi Kühnert), Male Lead (Milan Peschel) and Supporting Actor (Otto Mellies) for the performances in Stopped On Track, to six technical nominations for Emmerich’s Shakespeare whodunit, including for DoP Anna J. Foerster and costume designer Lisy Christl who was nominated earlier this year for an Academy Award for her work on Anonymous.

Barbara, Anonymous and Stopped On Track will be vying for the Golden Lola for Best Feature Film with Christian Zübert’s comedy Three Quarter Moon, Tim Fehlbaum’s apocalyptic thriller Hell and David Wnendt’s Combat Girl, while the honours for Best Documentary will be fought out between Angelina Maccarone’s Charlotte Rampling – The Look, Corinna Belz’s Gerhard Richter Painting and Peter Dörfler’s The Big Eden, and the Lola for the Best Children’s Film will be a two-horse race between Hermine Huntgeburth’s Tom Sawyer and Johannes Schmid’s Wintertöchter.

The production companies who had films nominated in the three categories of Best Feature Film, Best Documentary and Best Children’s Film can already consider them winners even if they don’t become the eventual winner on April 27 since the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media Bernd Neumann is generous enough to have paid out a total of € 2.05m in nomination premiums to these titles.

The six films nominated for Best Feature Film received € 250,000 each to be invested by the producers in future film projects, while the three nominated documentaries each took home €100,000 and the two children’s films € 125,000.

The full list of the nominees in the 16 categories can be found at the German Film Academy’s website www.deutsche-filmakademie.de.

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