The Jury Announces the Winners of the Film Prize of the Robert Bosch Stiftung

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Encompassing Co-production Projects between Germany, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon

The Jury Announces the Winners of the Film Prize of the Robert Bosch Stiftung


On Sunday, February 8th, 2015, Robert Bosch Stiftung announced the three Film Prize winners at the award ceremony held in the frame of Berlinale Talents. The Film Prize for the documentary film project went to the Egyptian-German documentary Amal by Mohamed Siam; the Film Prize for the short fiction film project (Jordan-Germany) went to The Parrot by Amjad Al Rasheed and Darin Salam, whereas the Film Prize for the Lebanese-German animation film project went to Clean Up The Living Room We've Got Visitors Coming, which is directed by Ghassan Halwani and produced by Inka Dewitz.

The three prizes are each worth up to 70,000 Euros as its winners will benefit from its value in funding his/her film project. Before the announcement of the winning film projects, fifteen nominated teams of German/Arab filmmakers pitched their project idea within 15 minutes to the international jury, who previously read the comprehensive project dossier.

Directed by Mohamed Siam and produced by Sara Bökemeyer, the documentary of Amal is a seed of a German/Egyptian co-production which reveals that when violence is used as a language against Amal, anger becomes her destiny and destination.

Amal was awarded by the jury for its freshness, intimacy and dynamic approach, showing the power of a marginalized young woman in Egyptian society today and for the openness of the director to the sudden turns history and private lives can take.

Directed by Amjad Al Rasheed and Darin Salam, produced by Roman Roitman, the short fiction film The Parrot is a German/Jordanian co-production which follows a Mizrahi Jewish family from Morocco, who tries to settle in to their new life in 1948 Haifa, Palestine, and is haunted by a disturbing house guest, a left behind big red parrot from the former Arab residents.

The jury convinced the original story about displacement and adaption told from an unusual perspective with lightness and great love for details.

Directed by Ghassan Halwani and produced by Inka Dewitz, the animation Clean Up The Living Room We've Got Visitors Coming is a German/Lebanese co-production. The film is set in Beirut, a city stuck in a vicious cycle of destruction and reconstruction and struggling to bury its murky past, people who disappeared during the Lebanese Civil War resurface to assert their enduring presence, unleashed by a vagabond who falls on their traces and bothers to scratch the surface of representation and new ideals.

The jury believed in the highly creative approach to an extremely complexed subject told from a very intimate point of view through an archeological search of a city's history into the present time.

This year's jury encompassed Vincenzo Bugno, Berlinale Delegate and World Cinema Fund; George David, Director Royal Film Commission; Johannes Ebert, General Secretary of Goethe-Institut; Doris Hepp, Commissioning Editor of ZDF/Arte; Marianne Khoury, Director of Misr International Films; Hania Mroué, Director of Metropolis Art Cinema; Roman Paul, Razor Film Production.

The Film Prize targets film co-production between young German filmmakers and their partners from the Arab World and selects the winning film, encouraging cultural exchange. Applying for the competition starts annually in May and ends in September and the winning film will benefit from the value of the Film Prize in funding his/her film project.