The 32nd Filmfest Dresden international short film festival in Dresden, Germany, announced the winners of its National and International Competitions at the awards ceremony in the Schauburg Dresden festival cinema.

The German film MASEL TOV COCKTAIL from Arkadij Khaet and Mickey Paatzsch is the winner of the € 20,000 Saxon State Minister of Culture and Tourism Promotion Prize sponsored by the Saxon State Ministry of Science, Culture and Tourism along with the Golden Horseman of the Audience in the National Competition.

The Golden Horseman Animated Film in the International Competition was awarded to ZORG 2 by Auden Lincoln-Vogel from Estonia. THE PHYSICS OF SORROW by Theodore Ushev (Canada) received the Golden Horseman of the Audience in the International Competition, in addition to a Special Mention.

In the National Competition, Jan Koester und Alexander Lahl won the Golden Horseman Animated Film for their film ABLAZE. The gender diversity jury bestowed the LUCA GenderDiversity Film Award on the animated film POSTPARTUM from Henriette Rietz, who also received a Special Mention from the jury in the National Competition.

Award Winners of the 32nd Filmfest Dresden

Golden Horsemen International Competition

Golden Horseman Animated Film International Competition

Winner:
ZORG 2 by Auden Lincoln-Vogel (Estonia 2019)

Jury Statement: A hugely entertaining, effortlessly funny and well-crafted film that packs in a lot without ever feeling too ambitious. It offers humorous critiques on the entertainment industry, Hollywood, capitalist motives and a society of commodities through the eyes of a naïve but ambitious alien. We want to commend its music and sound design, which only strengthens its comedy, and distinctive visual style

Special Mention:
THE PHYSICS OF SORROW by Theodore Ushev (Canada 2019)

Jury Statement: A visually impressive, overwhelmingly beautiful and ambitious film, which tells both a personal story and a global story in an equally captivating and moving way.

Golden Horseman Short Fiction Film International Competition

Winner:
STAY AWAKE, BE READY (Hãy TỉnH THức Và Sẵn Sàng) by Pham Thien An (Vietnam/ South Korea/ USA 2019)

Jury Statement: An impressively choreographed one-shot film that, through a series of interrelated vignettes, offers short glimpses into several personal lives and destinies, touching on social dynamics and behaviours while also sustaining a sense of mystery and offering us the opportunity to wander across the frame. A purposeful and almost playful sense of timing makes the film even stronger, teasing the viewer by letting us desire more

Special Mention:
RISE by Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Búrca (Brazil/ Canada/ USA 2019)

Jury Statement: Offering personal and poignant performances that claim the anonymous architecture of public transport transit spaces with expressions of belonging, roots and agency.

Golden Horsemen of the Audience International Competition

Winner:
THE PHYSICS OF SORROW by Theodore Ushev (Canada 2019)

Golden Horseman of the Youth Jury International Competition

Winner:
FIEBRE AUSTRAL by Thomas Woodroffe (Chile 2019)

Jury Statement: A newly created insular reality, to which the beholder can be granted access. The further the film develops, the greater does our certainty become breached. When the viewer becomes a part of it, they start to assemble what is perceived into a story. We were convinced by the film’s clear visual language and calmness. The characters’ strengths and the play with the landscapes and colors accorded an awe-inspiring experience

Special Mention:
TRAUMA CHAMELEON by Gina Kamentsky (USA 2019)

Jury Statement: A short film using experimental elements like a combination of photography, drawing and audio clips to create an emotional heaviness immediately and reinvent the word “stress”.

Golden Horsemen National Competition

Golden Horseman Animated Film National Competition

Winner:
ABLAZE by Jan Koester and Alexander Lahl (Germany 2019)

Jury Statement: Black penetrates the intact world, houses drift apart, billows of smoke rise. Through its accomplished combining of the animated and documental, the film recounts impressively how it feels to suddenly be marginalised. It conveys in an artistically virtuoso manner the sense that something is changing and spreading out in our country.

Special Mention:
POSTPARTUM by Henriette Rietz (Germany 2020)

Golden Horseman Short Fiction Film National Competition

Winner:
AFTER TWO HOURS, TEN MINUTES HAD PASSED by Steffen Goldkamp (Germany 2019)

Jury Statement: The precise observations in photographic quality reveal an everyday life that remains invisible in the public sphere. Through deliberate omissions on a visual level, the film finds an adequate form for its subject. The protagonists retain their dignity and are not put on display. The viewers are able to experience sensorially how a lifetime becomes a punishment.

Special Mention:
5 WAYS TO CRY by Michael Fetter Nathansky (Germany 2019)

Golden Horseman of the Audience National Competition

Winner:
MASEL TOV COCKTAIL by Arkadij Khaet, Mickey Paatzsch (Germany 2020)

Golden Horseman Youth Jury National Competition

Winner:
TRADING HAPPINESS (Trao Đổi Hạnh Phúc) by Duc Ngo Ngoc (Germany/ Vietnam 2020)

Jury Statement: The one-child policy continues to have a dramatic impact on China’s neighbouring countries. With a gripping portrait of a mother and her daughter, the director focuses our attention on his country of origin Vietnam and thus reveals a new perspective of the issues involved. The
outstanding visual language, thrilling performances by the cast and the courageous adaptation permit the enthusiasm for the short film to become palpable.

Saxon State Minister of Culture and Tourism Promotion Prize

Winner:
MASEL TOV COCKTAIL by Arkadij Khaet, Mickey Paatzsch (Germany 2020)

Jury Statement: Detailed, courageous and cinematically refreshing. An explosive mixture against simplistic pigeonhole thinking with the gloves off and as uncompromising as a punch in the face. Would love to have more!

DEFA Promotion Prize Animation

Winner:
CHARACTERISTICS OF NATURE – THE TWANY OWL by Aleksandar Radan (Germany 2019)

Jury Statement: An informative and disconcertingly congenial documentation of a digital parallel biotope.

Golden Horsemen National & International Competition

ARTE Short Film Prize

Winner:
EL INFIERNO Y TAL (HELL AND SUCH) by Enrique Buleo (Spain 2019)

Jury Statement: A Spanish movie questioning role models and reality. The movie humorously celebrates a preposterous world in doomsday mood and shows the courage to play with moral values. Brave, quirky and surprising. We congratulate Enrique Buleo on his successful trip into hell

Golden Horseman Sound Design

Winner:
PLUME by Hannah Weissenborn, Music/sound: Johann Meis (Germany/ France 2019)

Jury Statement: Initially we realize an absence of music. When music occurs, it connects to the protagonist’s emotion regardless of the image: the transformation of unrest into strength. In retrospect, the music attains new meaning. The audience is transfixed by an unconventional and psychologically precise use of the musical pause

Special Mention:
HAVE A NICE DOG! by Jalal Maghout(Germany/ Syria 2020)

LUCA Film Award for GenderEquality

Winner:
POSTPARTUM by Henriette Rietz (Germany 2020)

Jury Statement: The ability of women to suffer exceeds that of men many times. Extreme pain and extreme happiness merge in this cinematic revelation for all genders into a wonderfully honest and absurd narrated flood of images. Our congratulations for the clarity in finding the strength to produce such an emotionally moving short film in this ambivalent time

Special Mention:
O MISTÉRIO DA CARNE (DESIRES OF THE FLESH) by Rafaela Camelo (Brazil 2018)

Jury Statement: The Special Mention goes to a film that is probably not wanted in its country of origin. The director Rafaela Camelo and her leading actresses have the courage to face the perfidious double standards of the Catholic Church from the perspective of two teenagers. DESIRES OF THE FLESH relates female desires and Christian rituals on an exposing meta-level in order to break up male dominated power structures.

Regional Film Night: Audience Award

Winner:
THE CALL von Karl-Friedrich König (Germany 2019)