Two scripts - Clemens Murath's Schatten Des Jaguar and Natja Brunckhorst's Wie Feuer Und Flamme - were awarded this year's German Script Prize, worth a total $47,000 (DM100,000), by Germany's state minister for culture Julian Nida-Ruemelin.

Murath's thriller is to be made as a European co-production, with Filmline's Arno Ortmair producing and the UK's Jon Blair directing, at the end of 2001. Actress-writer Brunckhorst's project, an East-West love story set in Berlin in the early 1980s, is set to be directed by Connie Walther for X-Filme Creative Pool, producers of Run Lola Run.

Nida-Ruemelin said that this year's prize - which consists of $19,000 (DM40,000) to be invested in the new script and $4,700 (DM10,000) for the screenwriter - was being presented to two screenplays for the first time "to meet the desire for as great a diversity in stories as possible".