Feb 24, 2023
The Perspektive Deutsches Kino Award Winners

The Perspektive Deutsches Kino award winners are:

• Compass-Perspektive-Award: Seven Winters in Tehran by Steffi Niederzoll
• Kompagnon Fellowships: Mareike Wegener (Perspektive Deutsches Kino 2022) and Anna Melikova (Berlinale Talents 2023)
• Heiner Carow Prize: Bones and Names by Fabian Stumm

The Compass-Perspektive-Award for best film in the programme is awarded to Steffi Niederzoll for the film Seven Winters in Tehran.

Jurors Dela Dabulamanzi, Anne Fabini and Jöns Jönsson presented the award, endowed with 5,000 euros, on closing night for Perspektive Deutsches Kino.
The director received a compass trophy, intended to symbolically help her navigate.

Jury statement on Seven Winters in Tehran:

How does one overcome the feeling of powerlessness and show resistance?
Spellbound, we follow the story of a young woman who defies institutionalised male violence. What also emerges is a sensitive portrait of a family torn apart by the battle against an unethical regime. Using a variety of documentary materials, the film follows a strict narrative arc.
This film is painful and unsettling. At the same time, encountering the young protagonist Reyhaneh is inspiring, leaving us with a spark of hope. The 2023 Compass-Perspektive-Award goes to Seven Winters in Tehran by Steffi Niederzoll.

Honorable Mention goes to El secuestro de la novia (The Kidnapping of the Bride) by Sophia Mocorrea.

The Kompagnon Fellowships for Perspektive Deutsches Kino and Berlinale Talents are awarded to Mareike Wegener (Perspektive Deutsches Kino 2022) and Anna Melikova (Berlinale Talents 2023, Script Station participant).

The Kompagnon Fellowship has been awarded since 2017 to a new film project by an author and/or director from Berlinale Talents, and to a director from Perspektive Deutsches Kino, with the goal of sustainably supporting the work of directors and screenwriters living in Germany. The award comprises a 5,000 euro grant (2,500 euros for short films) as well as a mentoring programme with on-the-job training for strengthening one’s personal signature and networking within the industry. Jurors Dela Dabulamanzi, Anne Fabini and Jöns Jönsson presented the awards.

My Beloved (working title) by Anna Melikova — jury statement:

The story is about identity, that constantly takes new turns. And early on, it gets very serious, because of the war dominating life in Ukraine. Is it possibly too soon to make a fiction film on the first weeks of the war of aggression? We think that’s exactly what lends the film its urgency and documentative immediacy. The author dares to touch on difficult subjects, but does so with lightness, capturing characters who are all in transitionary phases. A trans man doesn't want to leave the country, but his wife suffering from PTSD puts pressure on him. She wants to leave, but not without him. They are stopped at the border due to martial law forbidding man 16 – 60 to cross the border. His wife is challenged because of her husband’s transition and her feelings about their changing relationship. The whole country, just like these two characters, is in transition, and when it’s over, nothing will be the same as it was before. We see great potential in Anna Melikova’s project My Beloved (working title) and hereby award it with a Kompagnon Fellowship 2023.

Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove by Mareike Wegener — jury statement:

The film is about a woman seldom seen in the movies – lonely, but searching, she wanders between reality and fantasy. The forced isolation of the pandemic is a barely manageable challenge for Cloe. The young philologist has made a career out of summarizing her clients’ resumes for speeches – but soon, they’re all eulogies. When even her own mother declines to hug Cloe, and her dog nearly dies from an overdose of sleeping pills, a lost glove becomes a substitute for human interaction and opens up a world of fantastic adventures. With the certainty of a sleepwalker, the film becomes a magical-realism thriller. Mareike Wegener plays with the audience’s expectations - fortunately, since it creates ludicrous moments of confusion that arise from the deep psychological pain of loneliness. Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove is awarded with the Kompagnon Fellowship 2023. Congratulations!

The 2023 Heiner Carow Prize supporting German film art is awarded to Perspektive talent Fabian Stumm (script) for Bones and Names.

For the tenth year, the Heiner Carow Prize, endowed with 5,000 euros, was presented at the Berlin International Film Festival. The award was advertised by the DEFA Stiftung and presented to a talent from Perspektive Deutsches Kino whose skills in their particular trade lent distinction to a documentary or fiction film in the section. A three-person jury - Freya Arde (film composer), Peter Kahane (director) and Mirko Wiermann (DEFA-Stiftung) - chose the winner. The award ceremony took place on February 23 at 4 p.m. at Kino International cinema.

Jury statement:

Choosing the winner wasn’t easy for us. But the one we chose is so filled with lightness – maybe acting as a counterpoint to the darkness of current events. And lightness doesn’t mean superficiality here. Quite the opposite: It’s a film that talks about everyday life with philosophical depth, about what is and what remains, wrapped in a comedic format: Deep thoughts, but not overly cerebral.
The manifold ambiguity of the script wins the viewer over with its wordplay, on one hand, and on the other, it frequently makes the characters’ feelings transparent without dialogue, visible only through small gestures and subtle facial expressions, both being applied with extremely precise timing. Political moments show up between the lines, unarticulated, but unmistakable: Sexual autonomy and multicultural diversity appear as a matter of course, leaving no need for a discussion on heteronormativity.
The film also comes alive thanks to its theatricality, which is reflected in a playful approach to the interdependence of art and reality, but also in the setup and composition of images. Theatre stage and white walls both become projection surfaces for a not-so-unbearable lightness of being.
The script author acts as his own director, leading actor and producer. We’re pleased to award the 2023 Heiner Carow Prize to Fabian Stumm for the script for his film Bones and Names.

More information and visual material from the award ceremony is available upon request from:

Press contact Perspektive Deutsches Kino
Caroline Schöps
Tel. +49 30 259 20 462

Press Office
February 24, 2023