2023-08-31 10:13:13
Film A scandal and its consequences
The German Film Prize draws consequences
Status: 31.08.2023 | Reading time: 2 minutes
Thomas Schubert and Paula Beer in “Red Sky”
Source: Christian Schulz, Schramm Film
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In the spring, the Film Academy made headlines when it didn’t even want to nominate one of the Berlinale winners for the German Film Prize. Now new rules should prevent such a scandal from repeating itself.
It was the biggest uproar in the almost twenty-year history of the German Film Academy: Christian Petzold’s “Red Sky”, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlinale in February, was not even pre-selected for the German Film Prize in March. An upstream commission had put 31 films on the list of works that the members of the Film Academy were allowed to decide on when awarding the Lolas 2023 – but Petzold’s drama was not among them.
The academy presidents, Florian Gallenberger and Alexandra Maria Lara, spoke out relatively quickly in favor of changing the selection process. That has happened now. The most important innovation is that the much-criticised first stage of the previously three-stage selection process has been eliminated. In future, the members of the academy will select the nominations directly from all the films submitted and no longer from a reduced pre-selection made by a commission. Once the nominations have been made, all members choose the winners of the German Film Prize in the second step.
Co-Presidents: Alexandra Maria Lara and Forian Gallenberger
Source: picture alliance/dpa/Gerald Matzka
In the past, the pre-selection by the commission also had practical reasons. Before the possibility of streaming, it was very difficult to sift through the annual production – sometimes up to 200 feature films. In order to ensure that all films entered for the selection process are seen, each Academy member will in future receive a randomized list of an average of ten films that must be seen at least in order to be allowed to vote.
Statistically, each film is viewed by at least 100 members and all films are given the opportunity to assert themselves. This principle of individual draws has been used successfully for several years in the selection of the Oscars and the British Baftas. With the new procedure, the task of the previous pre-selection committees, to view all films, is distributed across all shoulders and is therefore a joint and year-round task for all Academy members.
In addition to the abolition of the pre-selection, there is another decisive innovation in the election process: in future, the members will continue to nominate according to their trade – for example, cameramen vote on the nominations for “Best Camera/Image Design”. But from next year, members of all trades will already be entitled to vote in the nomination phase in the categories “Best Feature Film” and “Best Children’s Film” – and not only in the final election of the award winners, as was previously the case.
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