Awards

Dubina Dva (Depth Two) by Ognjen Glavonic

Statement of the Jury:

The Golden Key jury awards unanimously Ognjen Glavonic with "Dubina Dva" ("Depth Two“) as the best upcoming documentary filmmaker. "Dubina Dva" brings us in a subtle and tormenting way back to a war crime committed in 1999 in Kosovo. It reminds equally perpetrators and victims, who we don't see, but who we imagine, and even more striking, who we can feel. In sequences full of disturbing poetry, "Depth Two" is turning landscapes of massacre and post-war time into a topography of horror. Voices of witness taken from the The Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, voices of the involved people are turning into a powerful voice-over composition full of emotion and striking memory. "No body – no crime": This was Ilobadan Milosevic's credo when he made corpses disappear. The film proves this sentence wrong, with the wise stylistic cinematic devices, that are genuine bodiless. And even while renouncing pompous effects the film is a breathtaking testimony of guilt and responsibility.

Emily Must Wait by Christian Wittmoser

Eisen by Benjamin Kahlmeyer

Statement of the jury:

This year the junges dokfest: A38-Production Grant Kassel-Halle goes to a movie which is inventive, emotional and important.

The movie is about refugees in Germany. The images, cold and convincing, tell us about their wishes, expectations not fulfilled, and their everyday life in a refugee camp.

Hoping to find an “Eldorado”, the golden city, they stranded in Iron, in German Eisenhüttenstadt.

The jury was convinced by the decelerated image. Thus the audience can feel the despair. The director proves his capability of capturing vulnerable moments. The winner of the A38 Production Grant goes to “Eisen” by Benjamin Kahlmeyer.

Surface Glaze by Lotte Meret

Statement of the jury:

Lotte Meret explores the human body in irritating close-ups: a black glossy liquid runs over a hairy body, like through a landscape, creamy makeup runs over the skin and unites with it, the bottom of a tongue shines tempting.

At first sight everything seems pure and flawless, but at a closer look we can see skin wrinkles, irritations and pigment spots. Remains unclear, if it is a man or a woman, one or more persons we are looking at. 

The artist uses a visual language that is daily present in advertising campaigns in magazines and on the retina displays of our mobile devices, fascinating and disturbing at the same time. By using and perfecting these commercial aesthetics, it clearly illustrates their mechanisms. Her images literary are going “under the skin”.