DAE Talent Award
DAE Talent Award, the award offers a one-off 60 minute consultation with a DAE - Documentary Association Europe industry professional for a Marketplace project, to help them navigate their way through the international marketplace.
Award winner 2025: YOUNG MEN
Award winner:
Bahar Bektaş
Between dreams and trauma, between failure and self-discovery, between lost fathers and new role models: What does it mean to be a young man today?
Review
Award winner 2024: OTHER PERSONS
Award winner:
Elaine del Valle Cala
The astonishing change of Cuban workers “cooperantes", who studied and worked in the former German Democratic Republic reveals how this experience modified their lives forever and led them to return to Cuba transformed into “other people”.
Award winner 2023: UNDINE*
Award winner:
Felix Rier
Barely a month after Undine's* 24th birthday, she is dragged into a car at night, violently drugged and raped for several hours. To overcome this emotional and physical trauma, she finds her voice in dance to express her longing for a peaceful and harmonious existence.
Award winners 2022: I LOOK LIKE MY MOTHER
Award winners:
Amina Maher (director), Lorena Junghans, Fabian Altenried und Sophie Ahrens (producers)
In search of the creation of an autonomous body, Amina Maher, a trans woman director, retraces the trauma buried within the relationship she has with her mother, as she reveals her unspoken desires in a process of honest self-exploration.
PADALA JE KISA I ONDA SE SETIM DA JE BILA OGNJENA MARIJA / IT WAS RAINING AND THEN I REMEMBERED IT WAS THE DAY OF FIERY MARY
Award winners:
Branislav Jankic (director) and Jelena Angelovski (production)
Footage of my mother before her death in a Munich apartment. A play of costumes matching my wife and daughter to photographs of my young mother. Through physical transformation, recollections of war, borders, rape, abuse, poverty and love come alive. A maelstrom of identity, an unforgettable impression of Balkan womanhood.
In addition, the project IT WAS RAINING AND THEN I REMEMBERED IT WAS THE DAY OF FIERY MARY received a 100% discount on the first year of DAE memberships for Branislav Jankic and Jelena Angelovski.
Award winning project 2021: 8 TO 18
Award winners:
Cosima Frei (director) and Nadine Lüchinger (production)
Over a period of ten years we are acompanying a family with two sons. At birth, gender and identity are coherent for one of the sons, while the other is mistaken for a girl because of his feminine physical features. 8 TO 18 is a film about acceptance in the family and society, but above all about how one can accept and develop oneself, even if this means breaking down social norms.
Award winning project 2020: AMALIE'S SHADOW
Award winners:
Esther Niemeier and Dirk Decker (directors), Andrea Schütte and Dirk Decker (production)
Amalie, the great-grandmother of director Esther Niemeier, was killed by the Nazis in a psychiatric hospital in 1941. Whether she was indeed mentally ill is uncertain. Her ex-husband had her committed after she divorced him. A woman with a mind of her own had to be crazy after all. Esther sets out on a cinematic quest for evidence.
