Top class juries will award the prize money totalling EUR 77,750
Facts:
- eight different juries / 18 awards
- audience can vote for their favourites
- increased prize money
The five members of the International Festival Jury will have the honour of awarding the four glass 'Lubinas' (Sorbian: 'the charming one'); however, seven other juries will award the prizes for Best Short Film, prize for the Best Youth Film, prize for Best Debut Film and other awards. The audience itself is called upon as the largest independent jury.
The members of the International Festival Jury are five directors who will view the festival films with very different eyes. Serbian Zelimir Zilnik, born in 1942 in Nis (Yugoslavia), was one of the directors of the 'Black Wave' in the late 1960s and has been contributing to the political and social debate with his pointed cinematic statements to this day. He was awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 1969 for EARLY WORKS. His latest film DESTINATION_SERBISTAN (Serbia 2015) about migration will be screened in Cottbus this year. The Dutch film maker Ineke Smits, born in 1960, has explored Dutch-Georgian topics in several of her films. The latest of these was STAND BY YOUR PRESIDENT (Netherlands 2014), which will be screened in the globalEAST section, which this year focuses on the links between the Netherlands and Eastern Europe. The Berlin-born director Andreas Kleinert is a professor for film and television directing at the Film University Babelsberg, where he himself studied. Aida Begic, born in
1976 in Sarajevo (Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina), shares a similar career, having studied at the prestigious Academy of Performing Arts in her birth city. Numerous awards (including the Cannes Critic's Week Grand Prix) testify to her success. Today, the director teaches at the academy in Sarajevo and trains the next generation. Her feature films SNOW and CHILDREN OF SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina 2012) have already been shown in Cottbus; this year, ALBUM (Bosnia and Herzegovina 2014) will be screened, her contribution to the omnibus film THE BRIDGES OF SARAJEVO. Director Visar Morina, born in 1979 in Pristina (Yugoslavia, now Kosovo), won numerous international awards for his short film DEATH BY SUFFOCATION soon after graduating from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. His feature film début BABAI (Germany, Kosovo, France, Macedonia 2015) won the award for best director at the International Film Festival Karlovy Vary and will be screened in the Spectrum section during this year's FilmFestival Cottbus.
The jury in the Short Feature Competition likewise faces a tough challenge.
Ivo Trajkov is the most experienced jury member with a filmography comprising more than 150 documentary films and numerous feature films. He contributes HONEY NIGHT (Macedonia, Slovenia, Czech Republic 2015), a remake of the Czechoslovakian Prague Spring cult film THE EAR (Czechoslovakia 1970), to the festival programme. The Polish actor Sandra Staniszewska returns to Cottbus as a jury member; her cinema début STONES FOR THE RAMPART (Poland 2014) was screened in the Lusatian metropolis during last year's festival. Her jury colleague Hannes Wagner was born in Cottbus. The expert for short and fulldome films and co-organiser of the worldwide first fulldome festival in Jena will moreover present a programme of impressive 360 degree films at the Cottbus Space Flight Planetarium.
The decisions of the Cottbus FilmSchau Jury, the FIPRESCI Jury, the Ecumenical Jury, the Jury for the DIALOG Prize for Intercultural Communication, the Jury of the Debut Film Prize and the binational Jury for the U 18 German-Polish Youth Film Competition are just as eagerly awaited.
The festival audience itself is called upon to act as a 'jury', as each year the audience favourite is identified in a survey.
A total of EUR 77,750 will be awarded during this year's FFC. To mark the occasion of the 25th festival anniversary, the Gesellschaft zur Wahrnehmung von Film- und Fernsehrechten (GWFF), a long-standing festival partner, has increased the prize money for the Main Prize for Best Film to EUR 25,000 in future. This prize money is equally shared between the director and the producer of the winning film. Once again, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg rbb sponsors the Special Prize for Best Director, endowed with EUR 7,500. EUR
5,000 each go to the best male and female actors; these awards are donated by the City of Cottbus and the Sparkasse Spree-Neiße. Medienboard Berlin- Brandenburg GmbH will support the distribution of a festival film with up to EUR 10,000. The name of this award says it all: 'From Cottbus to Cinema'.
Andreas Stein, Managing Director of the FilmFestival Cottbus, is delighted:
"The fact that in our anniversary issue we can award the film makers with prize money totalling EUR 77,750 demonstrates the national and international standing the FilmFestival Cottbus enjoys these days."
The festival is decisively sponsored by the Federal State of Brandenburg, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the City of Cottbus. Other sponsors and supporters include the European Union's MEDIA - Creative Europe Programme, the German Federal Foreign Office, the German Federal Centre for Political Education, BIG cinema as well as the German State Minister of Culture and the Media, Monika Grütters. Many other local and regional partners such as Sparkasse Spree-Neiße and Gebäudewirtschaft Cottbus likewise support 'their festival'.
Andreas Stein: "We thank all supporters, sponsors and prize donors for their fantastic support in this year and, of course, also during the past
24 years."