German Dramas Win Big at Locarno Pro Industry Awards

Three new German dramas have scooped up top honors at the 2022 Locarno Film Festival‘s First Look awards, an industry prize that backs works-in-progress.

Lukas Nathrath’s One Last Evening, a scathing dramedy that skewers success-obsessed society, took the Cinegrell First Look Award, which comes with a $51,000 (50,000 euro) bursary in postproduction services from German/Swiss post-house Cinegrell.

Arthur & Diana, a road movie from director Sara Summa, won the Le Film Français Award and the accompanying $5,700 (5,600 euro) in advertising services for the yet-to-be-released feature. Summa, director of the Italian-set 2019 horror title The Last to See Them, stars in the documentary-style Arthur & Diana with her real-life brother. The feature follows the two siblings as they travel from Berlin to South Tyrol re-enacting the road trips of their childhood.

Locarno Pro’s Kaiju Cinema Diffusion Prize, which includes $5,100 (5,000 euro) to go toward the design of an international poster for the film, went to Elaha from director Milena Aboya. The feature follows a Kurdish bride-to-be living in Germany struggling with her family traditions and her desire to make her own way in life.

The Alphapanda Market Breakout Award, presented by Locarno Pro’s co-development platform Alliance 4 Development, went to The Village Next to Paradise, a project from Somalia-born director Mo Harawe and Austrian producers Oliver Neumann and Sabine Moser of FreibeuterFilm. The prize comes with $3,050 (3,000 euro) in professional consultancy services for the project.

An international jury, made up of Vanja Kaludjercic for the Rotterdam Film Festival, the London Film Festival’s Tricia Tuttle and Huh Moonyung of the Busan Film Festival, picked this year’s winners from the in-progress projects presented to industry audiences of sales agents and festival programmers Aug. 5-7 in Locarno this year.

Previous Locarno Pro winners that have received successful releases include Elite Zexer’s Sand Storm (2015) from Israel, Brazilian feature The Second Mother (2014) from director Anna Muylaert and Landscapes of Resistance (2019) from Serbian filmmaker Marta Popidova.