Highlights of the festival and final assessment

Tonight, the official closing film “Northbound” by William Scoular was screened at the awards ceremony at the Oldenburg State Theater, where the award winners were announced. “Variations on Violence” by Zachary Nichols won the German Independence Award for Best Film, “Foreign Tongue” by Boris Mojsovski was honored with the Spirit of Cinema Award, and “The Joyless Economy” by Marjorie Conrad won the Audacity Award. “Big Daddy’s Flowers” by Matthew Osubor was awarded the Hans Ohlms Prize for Best Debut Film. “White Whiter Whitest Black” by Michele Leonardi won the German Independence Award for Best Short Film. In addition, Gia Crovatin for “Murderous” and Frank Mosley for “Jackrabbit” were honored with the Seymour Cassel Award for their outstanding acting performances.

German Independence Award – Best Film

“Variations on Violence“ by Zachary Nichols

Jury Statement: This is a film about distance, and about how little distance protects us. A war fought far away, watched on a screen, and the damage arriving anyway, all the way inside.

The filmmaker found a form for that. Images from far away, data and information of a machine we cannot unlearn, crafted like sculpture, and behind them a director who knows the machine is never the subject, the person at the console is. A breath of Tarkovsky in the montage, a breath of Lynch in the imagination. The score is unsparing, violence and darkness delivered almost like a classical musician who understands what is fought far away but destroys inside.

An American film of massive ambition and indelible performances, political at heart and distant enough to let a working-class story stay a story, about American identity and the scary state of the world, about a man consumed by what he watches and a codependent sister who pays for it. Spiritual in the way only cinema manages, and cathartically beautiful.

Seymour Cassel Award – Best Actor / Actress 

Frank Mosley for “Jackrabbit“

Jury Statement: This is a performance that is not performative. It’s a life lived with honesty, authenticity, and truth. This character inhabits a harsh, bleak world, a world of incredible hardship. And yet, he never loses his humanity, and even brings moments of humor into a tragic, unbearably dark existence. With few words, this artist dives deeply into the abyss of hopelessness.

Gia Crovatin for “Murderous“

Jury-Statement: From Shakespeare to Mamet, the greatest wordsmiths have offered the greatest opportunities and also the greatest challenges to artists. And to embody their words is to journey deep into the complexity and nuance of every exact intention of the creator. To flow through the minefield, breath life, and manifest a character requires excellence.

German Independence Award – Spirit of Cinema
“Foreign Tongue“ by Boris Mojsovski

Hand crafted in bronze by Mongolian Artisans, this extraordinary piece was created specifically for the Oldenburg International Film Festival and sponsored by THREE FLAMES PICTURES – winners of the inaugural award for THE STEED 5 years ago.

The SPIRIT OF CINEMA AWARD was created to honor those filmmakers who, while reminding us of the grand traditions of the masterful filmmakers of the past, also carve a new path for the future, as they display - for all of us to experience- how this most wondrous of art forms finds its greatest of expressions on the big screen.

This year, in the spirit of its essence, we have asked the Audience to determine this Award, based on their visceral Cinematic experience.

German Independence Award – Originality, Daring, and Audacity

“The Joyless Economy” by Marjorie Conrad

Jury Statement: The Audacity Award was created to celebrate Originality & Daring. This film pushes boundaries through its form. It is formal and inventive at once, an almost-documentary with uncannily intimate images and a film library that gains power, equal parts hypnotic and brutally honest, ethically complex yet rewardingly human.

This is a filmmaker who creates a totally new language for her exploration of human intricacy and marginal psyches, giving validity to the soul of others, entering rabbit holes with anthropological curiosity and coming out with beautiful and gut-wrenching truths as if they mirrored her own. She speaks from knowing how cinema viscerally transforms someone from within.

Hans Ohlms Award- Best Debut Film

“Big Daddy’s Flowers“ by Matthew Osubor

Jury Statement: Limitations produce resourcefulness. This is a filmmaker who made a film without a budget and went looking for something far greater, and the recklessness and the informality are not what the film survived, they are what made it special. The playful spirit is what keeps it from the gravity and solemnity too many films get lost in.

It is funny the way films were funny in the 90s, cynical and acerbic and unbothered about fitting in, the kind of film that becomes a cult classic.

Rightfully incorrect in its subversion of racial stereotypes. Where another film would ask to be believed, this one takes what it needs. It uses the laugh to say what earnestness cannot, a wild ride that turns out to be a humbling comedy of nuanced social commentary.

Fresh, brave, fearless, brilliantly comedic. A first feature with nothing to protect, the whole spirit of American independent cinema and of this festival's ethos.

German Independence Award – Best Short Film

“White Whiter Whitest Black” by Michele Leonardi

Jury Statement: Nothing in this film is loud and all of it lands. In fifteen minutes this director has already made something you know is his, and he trusts us enough not to explain it.

It is a film about purity and it never turns graphic to get there. It carries the oldest yearning there is, the nostalgia for being rid of guilt, for feeling free of it more than anything, and it takes a subject most people would call a problem and holds it without flinching.

It puts the passions in order, the ones everybody has felt, and it uses them to undo the idea of sin. The eventual betrayal the film is building to is one we can hardly conceive of ethically, and yet the film dismantles it with grace and simplicity. That should not be possible. Evidently it is. 

Highlights of the Festival

This year’s retrospective was dedicated to American director and playwright Neil LaBute, whose latest film, “Murderous,” celebrated its world premiere on Friday at the Filmfest. In addition to Neil LaBute, lead actress Gia Crovatin was also a guest in Oldenburg. The festival also screened Neil LaBute’s films “In the Company of Men” (1997), “Your Friends & Neighbors” (USA), “Nurse Betty” (2000), “Some Velvet Morning” (2013), and “House of Darkness” (2022).

Stuntwoman Zoe Bell was honored with a tribute. Over the course of three decades, she transformed the role of the stunt double into an artistic achievement in its own right. As part of the tribute, her films “Double Dare” (2004), “Death Proof” (2007), “Angel of Death” (2009), and “Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood” (2019) were presented.

The festival in numbers

Audience numbers stayed at around 13,000 visitors in the festival cinemas and the Oldenburg State Theater. This development is further proof that audiences are still longing for authentic culture and original films beyond the mainstream, and that the festival can hold its own against easily accessible streaming services.