International Feature Film Award
The International Feature Film Competition, which comes with a prize of €25,000, was won this year by German film director Maren Ade for her film ALLE ANDEREN [aka Everyone Else], a film about a couple on holiday in Sardinia and about unfulfilled wishes and power games. Birgit Minichmayr and Lars Eidinger shine in the main roles as Gitti and Chris. The leading characters' fear of responsibility and of their own feelings reflects their emotional lack of direction. An intimate love story that x-rays the depths of a personal relationship and, as a film, relies wholly on the subtle and moving skills of the actors. Like Ms Ade's debut film DER WALD VOR LAUTER BÄUMEN [aka The Forest for the Trees] before it, ALLE ANDEREN takes a simple outgoing situation and turns it into a multilayered story with poignant effect. German actress Franziska Petri, Swedish film director Maria von Heland and Italian festival administrator Paola Paoli who formed the international jury and who were highly impressed by the form and aesthetic spectrum of all the competition entries, explained their decision as follows …
A wonderfully produced film, perfectly acted and as entertaining as it is intelligent. That oldest of all stories – love – is told with immense honesty, courage and passion. By focussing on a seemingly normal couple and proceeding gently in a subtle narrative style, the film allows the viewers to ask questions about their own ability to love and about the values that society holds. We see our own world with new eyes.


Audience Prize
And the winner, now the final votes from the audience have been counted, is …. HIMALAYA, A PATH TO THE SKY directed by Marianne Chaud, the first person to receive the new AUDIENCE PRIZE. A Buddhist monastery in the peaks of the Himalayas is home to child monks as well as adult. The eight-year-old Kenrap, for instance, was placed in the monastery by his parents — at his own request when he was still only five. Once a year, all the monks make a pilgrimage down to the villages. Instead of solemn pilgrims, though, we encounter cheerful little brats who display much wit and affection. Kindly donated by trailer-Ruhr, a cinema listings website, the €1,000 prize was presented Sunday evening to the film's editor Françoise Berger Garnault. Votes, by the way, could be cast for any film longer than fifty minutes showing at the festival and made between 2006 and 2009.


National Competition for Women Directors of Photography
The awards for the National Competition for Women Directors of Photography were also presented at the ceremony held on 26 April 2009. Endowed with prize money of €5,000 and aimed at women cinematographers working in the feature film sector, the award this year has been divided equally between two entrants: Susanne Kurz for her camerawork in the short feature 1,2,3 and Marlen Schlawin for her camerawork in Badetag [aka The Day He Went Swimming].

Making its own debut, the award for best camerawork in a documentary film goes to Anne Misselwitz for her DER, DIE, DAS [aka The Amount of Small Things]. It comes with a purse of €2,500 kindly sponsored by DerWesten, the online portal of the WAZ Media Group. The award jury here – Bella Halben, Sophie Maintigneux and Ute Freund – were overwhelmed by the abundance, variety and quality of the documentary films submitted and were thus pleased to give a Special Mention to Cologne Academy of Media Arts graduate Julia Daschner for her documentary AUF DER WALZ [aka Learning on the Road].
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