The producers of Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur and Alisa Kolosova’s I Spy With My Little Eye were among the winners of this year’s Hamburg Producer Awards, held on September 30 during during FilmFest Hamburg and endowed with prize money totalling €85,000.
The Hamburg Producers Award for international cinema co-production went to Minotaur’s German co-producers Gerhard Meixner, Roman Paul and Christiane Sommer of Berlin-based Razor Film.
Minotaur, which will be released theatrically in Germany by Mubi Deutschland on November 5, had its German premiere in FilmFest Hamburg’s Kaleidoscope sidebar on September 29.
Meanwhile, the Hamburg Producers Award for German cinema was presented to Tristan Bähre and Philipp Maron of the Bavarian production outfit Maverick Film for their production of Kolosova’s debut feature. I Spy With My Little Eye had its world premiere at Tribeca in June and celebrated its German premiere in Hamburg’s Große Freiheit section on October 1.
I Spy With My Little Eye, which will be released in German cinemas by Christoph Ott’s Filmwelt, had been one of the productions showcased at last year’s European Work in Progress in Hamburg.
Both awards included cash prizes of €25,000 donated by Hamburg Senate’s Ministry of Culture and Media.
Another cash prize of €25,000 - this time donated by the VFF collection society for the Hamburg Producers Award for German television films - went to producer Markus Mayr of MÄKSMY Films for his production of Caren Wuhrer’s Hamburg-set drama Lord, while Simon Amberger, Korbinian Dufter and Rafael Parente of Munich-based Neuesuper took home the €10,000 Hamburg Producers Award for German series for their six-part series Blindspot Berlin which had its world premiere in Toronto last month.
The drama about the events leading up to an extremist’s attack on the Christmas Market on Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz in 2016 will be aired on public broadcaster ARD from November 1. International sales are being handled by Beta Film.
In addition, Berlin-based distributor Grandfilm received the CICAE’s arthouse cinema award for French director Marine Atlan’s coming of age tale La Gradiva which screened in the Voilà! sidebar
The cash prize of €25,000 sponsored by MOIN is intended as support for PR activities to accompany the film’s theatrical release in Germany.
The Albert Wiederspiel Award, named after Malika Rabahallah’s predecessor as festival director from 2003 to 2023 and sponsored by the Hapag Lloyd Foundation with €10,000 prize money, was presented to Rafiki Fariala’s Congo Boy.
Distribution award
Meanwhile, FilmFest Hamburg’s International Film Distribution Summit (IFDS) presented its best international innovation distribution award to Vladimir Kokh, founder and CEO of the French distribution company KMBO.
Speaking in honour of Kokh’s achievements since founding his company in 2007, Francois Yon, founder and CEO of the Playtime Group, quipped: “When you work in international sales, you spend a considerable time trying to convince distributors that a film is exceptional. Only on very, very rare occasions is a film exceptional. In 20 years, Vladimir never believed me - not once - and I never managed to sell a film to him!”
As Yon pointed out, “KMBO has developed a modern approach to distribution, identifying audiences with great precision, creating original content using data, intelligence, partnership events, pushing films far beyond the traditional campaign.”
He added that the Award “therefore recognises the vision of what independent distribution can and should be: bold, inventive, deeply committed to the theatrical experience and engaged to build the future.”
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