Malika Rabahallah and the Dardennes brothers

Source: Michael Kottmeier

Malika Rabahallah and the Dardennes brothers

This year’s edition of Filmfest Hamburg came to a close at the weekend with the German premiere of Hikari’s Rental Family, as this year’s edition became the best- attended in the festival’s 33-year history.

Malika Rabahallah’s second edition as festival director saw admissions 5% year on year to around 62,000 admissions, according to the festival, including the preceding open-air Binnenalster Filmfest and the participants for the expanded Industry Days.

The awards presented in the closing night gala were led by the €5,000 NDR Young Talent Award, sponsored by local public broadcaster NDR, which was presented to Lucky Lu by Korean-Canadian filmmaker Lloyd Lee Choi.

The Critics’ Choice award was won by Danish filmmaker Zinnini Elkington’s feature debut Second Victim, while the Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s prize for socially -engaged cinema was awarded to Lana Daher’s Do You Love Me, a personal journey through Lebanon’s audiovisual memory.

Alice Douard’s tragic-comedy Love Letters won the festival’s audience aard.

Ahead of the awards ceremony on Saturday evening, the Michel Children and Youth Film Festival’s jury of seven children and young people had presented the €10,000 Michel Film Award Maja to Tales From The Magic Garden jointly directed by animators from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and France.

The festival extended its relationship with Ukraine to name Kyiv-born writer-director Zhanna Ozirna as the third recipient of the €10,000 Albert Wiederspiel Prize for International Film Directing for her film Honeymoon

Approximately,2,000 local and international industry guests attended Filmfest Hamburg’s Industry Days, including the Made in Germany national programme and Explorer Konferenz as well as European Work in Progress (EWIP) and International Film Distribution Summit. 

Some 814 guests from 36 countries were welcomed on the Filmfest’s red carpets, almost 500 more than last year, an increase which was largely down to the casts and crews of the German film and TV productions coming to Hamburg to support their screenings.

International guests in town included Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the recipients of the Douglas Sirk Prize, James Sweeney, Ferzan Özpetek, Philippe Falardeau, Kate Beecroft, Anne Émond, Ali Asgari, and this year’s ‘Filmmakers in Focus’ Julia Ducournau and Kleber Mendonça Filho, as well as the actors Trine Dyrholm, Nadia Melitti, Jean-Christophe Folly, Verena Altenberger, Gaumaya Gurung, Shyama Shree Sherpa, and 1960s fashion icon Twiggy.

 

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