On May 15, the 15th LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International officially ended with the grand awards ceremony in the festival center, the Cantate-Saal of the Volksbühne im Großen Hirschgraben. Starting on May 10, 2022, the LICHTER Filmfest showcased current world cinema on the theme of "freedom," highlights of German filmmaking, the best feature-length and short films of the region, virtual reality films and selected contemporary video art.

More than 70 films, audience discussions with filmmakers and film-political panels with guests from over 20 European countries as part of the 2nd ZUKUNFT DEUTSCHER FILM congress created a festival atmosphere over six days. The grand closing of the congress in Frankfurt's Paulskirche with the Greek-French director Costa-Gavras remains unforgotten.

"15 years of LICHTER mean 15 years of colorful film pleasure in Frankfurt. To be able to celebrate this anniversary together with team, filmmakers and audience after two years of pandemic in the cinema hall makes us euphoric for what is yet to come. The festival week has shown us that it is worth believing in the power of film and the future of cinema," say festival organizers Gregor Maria Schubert and Johanna Süß.

BEST REGIONAL FEATURE FILM

Out of ten entries in the Regional Feature Film Competition, RP Kahl's Als Susan Sontag im Publikum saß is honored with the White Bembel embedded with 3,000 euros - donated by the Dr. Marschner Foundation. With his reenactment film, RP Kahl brings an important milestone of feminism into the present: 50 years ago, the writer Norman Mailer got into a combative and witty battle of words in New York's Townhall - with the four writers and activists Jacqueline Ceballos, Germaine Geer, Jill Johnston and Diana Trilling. In the audience is none other than the great intellectual Susan Sontag. RP Kahl restages the debate as a play and at the same time shows in all candor the controversial discussions in which his actresses and he repeatedly get into during rehearsals: about their characters, power, being a woman, sexuality and feminism. When Susan Sontag Sat in the Audience is a lusty plea for the culture of argument.

Als Susan Sontag im Publikum saß jumps between different levels of content and form and repeatedly jolts the viewer: inside out of their comfort zone. The film opens up a discourse, provokes and sometimes annoys us. But above all, it encourages us to investigate, to reposition ourselves and to continue the discussion with relish, for example over a glass of beer (as the director suggests)," was the laudatory speech of the jury, consisting of Antonia Kilian (cinematographer, director and producer), Babara Philipp (actress) and Jakob Zimmermann (editor ZDF/Das kleine Fernsehspiel).

The jury awarded an honorable mention to Kassel-based director Fabian Schmalenbach for his documentary Gemeinsam Nüchtern, a multi-perspective observation of self-organized withdrawal on a farm near Marburg. "Without romanticizing or idealizing, the diverse challenges and frictions between the individual and the collective are told observationally. The film goes into depth at the right moments and shows a complex picture of people who want to shape their future in a self-responsible way and who, in order to do so, submit to a strongly rule-based community," according to the jury.

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BEST REGIONAL SHORT FILM

The 1,000 euro prize for the regional short film competition goes to Joey Arand with her film 21:71 Uhr, which deals with forgetting in the form of dementia.

The jury, consisting of Alexandra Gramatke (filmmaker and managing director of the Kurzfilm Agentur Hamburg), Karl-Eberhard Schäfer (film producer) and Peter Meister (freelance writer and director), praised the director's innovative way and creativity of conveying the sensual experience of dementia and making this difficult subject almost physically tangible through impressive cinematic means: "Seemingly disoriented, the subjective camera wanders through an apartment whose furnishings make it clear: someone has already lived a long life here. Searching, the gaze is directed again and again into the rooms, in which fragments of memory - shot on 16 mm - mingle with increasingly clear signs of memory loss: Tomatoes on the dressing table, shoes on the kitchen counter ... We hear the shuffling of slippers, accompanied by a song from the old days. On the sound level, too, the present and the past mix," the jury said in its laudation. "There is a melancholy that emerges without an ounce of sentimentality."

There was an honorable mention for the short film Getrennte Gewalten by Joschua Keßler, which is dedicated to the subject of NSU 2.0. "A short film of remarkable technical sovereignty, which aptly implements a highly topical political issue, also introduces an emotional level through good direction and actors, and shows itself to be of very high quality in terms of images and set design," praised the jury.

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AUDIENCE AWARD FEATURE LENGTH FILM

Finally, cinema with an audience again! That also means: the audience award, endowed with 1,000 euros, is back! The audience could vote for each feature film with 1 (great) to 5 (can't be done) and chose On the Other Side (Del Otro Lado) by Iván Guarnizo. The autobiographical documentary tells the story of his mother, Beatriz, who is abducted by FARC guerrillas for nearly two years during the Colombian Civil War. When she dies a few years after her release, her sons find the diary in which she describes the time of her captivity. With it, the brothers head into the Colombian jungle in search of the guerrilla fighter who abducted their mother.

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6th VR STORYTELLING AWARD

This year's LICHTER VR Storytelling Award goes to Lockdown Dreamscape VR by Nicolas Gebbe. The winner can look forward to 1,000 euros in prize money. In this experimental film, an apartment becomes a cosmos through which the viewers float as if through a space station, detached from the rest of the world. Familiar forms dissolve and become something new, but in the end everything just goes round and round in circles.

For the sixth time, the festival presented narrative and documentary 360-degree films in the international competition. The five finalists were selected by a jury of experts consisting of Agata Di Tommaso, Michael Gödde and Mathias Fournier. The jury gave an honorable mention to Tearless by Gina Kim. The film shows in atmospheric images a harrowing testimony of the victims of war and sexual violence. A deserted place that stands for the suffering of abused women in the Korean War. Images that get under the skin.

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12th LICHTER ART AWARD

Already on Monday, the winner of the 12th LICHTER Art Award was chosen from five nominated works at basis e.V.: Alice Brygo may take home the Bembel and prize money of 1,000 euros. The jury of this year's LICHTER Art Award, consisting of Cristin Müller (basis e.V.), Gunter Deller (film artist) and Saul Judd (curator LICHTER Art Award) emphasized in their laudation the stylistic as well as thematic particularity of Alice Brygo's work Soum.

The film Soum is about Inti, Jai and Pauline trying to find their place in the world, about generational conflicts and origins, traditions, cultures and the search for one's own identity in a society shaped by capitalist structures. The film oscillates between intimate documentary, artistic performance and surrealistic staging and takes us into the world and intimate adventures of the three young protagonists. Questioning power structures, the film pushes to find a utopian place where culture, origins, history and rituals merge and confront the unresolved questions of the future. "In a time of high capitalist economic and production pressure, where the individual is just a number and community is constantly threatening to disappear, artist and filmmaker Alice Brygo has made a relevant social commentary and convinced us with her virtuoso use of different aesthetic styles," praised the jury.