Image: Alamode Film
The semi-documentary film “Vera” by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel won the “Best Film” category at the Austrian Film Prize awarded yesterday. The film, about Italian actress Vera Gemma, Giuliano Gemma’s daughter, also won in the Best Director and Best Editing categories. Vicky Krieps received the award for the best female leading role as Empress Sisi in “Corsage”, Gerhard Liebmann won the male counterpart for the portrayal of the tough (and gay) army trainer Charles in “Eismayer”. Like Marie Kreutzer’s “Corsage”, this film received four awards. The award for the best supporting actress went to Gerti Drassl (“Märzengrund”). The best documentary film was “Elfriede Jelinek – Letting the language off the leash”. Mo Harawe’s Will My Parents Come to See Me won Best Short Film.
In the warm ambience of the Globe, the celebratory gala for the 13th Austrian Film Prize started on Thursday evening in Vienna – and at the beginning of the evening one burning topic was in the foreground: the discussion about the cause of Florian Teichtmeister. Finally, the actor, who has been accused of possessing tens of thousands of child molestation images, can be seen in two of the night’s nominated films (“Corsage” and “Serviam”). “We all share a fundamental attitude: for democracy, for equal rights for all genders and nationalities – for equal rights for all people and against any form of abuse of power”, emphasized Verena Altenberger and Arash T. Riahi as the presidential duo of the Austrian Film Academy at the beginning: ” We want to find informed and ultimately clear words.” The aim is a “transformation from the culture of looking the other way to a culture of looking”.
The motto of the award ceremony designed by director Catalina Molina reflected the ambivalence with the chosen motto “Through the night to the light”, which was also underlined by the moderation duo Julia Jelinek and Thomas Mraz. “We all agree that there must also be room for the difficult and unpleasant topics tonight,” says Mraz: “Because the discourse, the dialogue and the arguing is exactly what our industry needs.”
Source: Nachrichten
