“Filmförderpreis” in the categories Animation, Short Film and Documentary awarded to co-production teams from Germany and Eastern and Southeast Europe

Stuttgart/Wiesbaden – April 3, 2007

The 2007 Filmförderpreis of Robert Bosch Stiftung for co-productions by young filmmakers from Germany and Eastern and Southeast Europe – which carries a purse of up to 210,000 euros in total – went to teams from Germany and Bulgaria (Animation), Germany and Poland (Short Film), and Germany and Estonia (Documentary). The prizes for outstanding film concepts will be presented to their young winners by Robert Bosch Stiftung at the goEast Festival in Wiesbaden tonight. The films will then be produced in Germany and the partner countries this year. ARTE television channel – a partner of the Filmförderpreis – will include at least one of the completed films in its program.

Fifteen film teams were selected and presented to an independent specialist jury in December. The Filmförderpreis of Robert Bosch Stiftung enables young producers, directors, cameramen, and scriptwriters to travel to a partner country and familiarize themselves with new working styles and methods. The foundation's partners are ARTE, Filmbüro Baden-Württemberg, and – for the first time this year – the goEast Festival in Wiesbaden.

Effective immediately, applications are once again open for co-production teams of young filmmakers from Germany and another country in Eastern or Southeast Europe. Only teams can apply. The films should be produced both in Germany and the partner country. The main purpose is cultural exchange.

Michaela Kezele, who won the prize for co-productions last year with her concept for "MILAN", went on to win the Grand Prix at the International Short Film Festival in Tampere, Finland, and then qualified for an Oscar nomination for best short film.

Animation: Anna Blume (German-Bulgarian co-production, prize funds: 45,000 euros)
Producer Ebele Okoye and director Vessela Dantcheva describe their prize-winning concept for the animated film "Anna Blume" as visual poetry. Okoye, who lives in Frankfurt, and Dantcheva from Sofia, Bulgaria, conceived the idea for their film at the eighteenth Dresden Film Festival in April 2006, where they spent a week in workshops, collaborating on the program "Europe in Motion," and discovered their shared interest in European art and poetry of the twentieth century. They chose Kurt Schwitter's poem "An Anna Blume," written in 1919. The visual creativity and language of the emblematic poem made it the ideal basis for a film, Okoye and Dantcheva say. The project will be realized as a 2D animated film. Ivan Bogdanov from Bulgaria will be art director, and Gregor Zootsky from Germany animation supervisor .

Short Film: Przyjaźń – Freundschaft (German-Polish co-production; prize money: 60,000 euros)
Joanna Kollbek of Poland (producer), Jamila Wenske (producer) and Nicole Volpert of Germany (director) tell the story of two boys in the German-Polish border region. Their film concept impressively describes the fate of the two friends who meet in secret to play. "A border region is always a territory in which language plays an important role as a thing that can separate and unite people," the young filmmakers said. "In the forest in our border region where they play cowboys and Indians, the two boys can get by with hardly any language at all." The film studies the language barriers between the children. It aims to use the broken language and accents of the boys, Jercy and Konrad, in a humorous way that children, too, can understand, to show how much easier it is to learn a foreign language bit by bit, through personal contact, and help each other. The script was written by Antonia Rothe and Katrin Milhahn, both of Germany. The cameraman is Radoslaw Ladczuk from Poland. The film will be shot in HDV format.

Documentary: Normal. Estnische und deutsche Lebenswelten (German-Estonian co-production; prize fund: 35,000 euros)
The team led by Sandra van Slooten of Germany and Heilika Võsu of Estonia aims to produce a documentary that observes everyday occurrences which show how the norms of life in Estonia and Germany diverge and overlap. The film is interspersed with short animations by Ülo Pikkov, and montages will be used to illustrate the outsider's perspective of Estonians on the German material and vice versa. Volker Maria Engel (director) and Sandra van Slooten have been working together on documentaries and short films for four years. Together they founded "Schnittmenge. Büro für Bewegtbild GbR". Heilika Võsu and Sandra van Slooten met at the Berlinale Talent Campus 2005.