Julia Gutweniger and Florian Kofler win the "Next Masters Competition" 2019 and the "Golden Dove" of the Media Foundation at DOK Leipzig film festival with their movie "Sicherheit123" ("Security123")
Leipzig, 2 November 2019. The Austrian-Italian documentary film duo Julia Gutweniger and Florian Kofler are this year's winners of the "Next Masters Competition - long documentary and animated film" at DOK Leipzig with their film "Sicherheit123". In atmospheric images, the film tells of man's efforts to tame the forces of nature in the Alps with structural interventions. The prize is donated by Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig and is endowed with 10,000 euros. The film "Arid Zone" (original title: "Zona árida") by Brazilian filmmaker Fernanda Pessoa also received a special mention in this competition. In the competition "Next Masters - short documentary and animation film" the Ukrainian animation artist Mykyta Lyskov won the competition with his animation film "Deep Love" (original title: "Kohannia") and won the Golden Dove as well as a prize money of 5,000 Euros, also donated by the Sparkasse Leipzig Media Foundation.
This year's jury of the "Next Masters" competitions consisted of the Finnish cultural journalist and managing director of the Nordisk Film & TV Fond Petri Kemppinen, the German filmmaker and curator Wieland Speck and Tan Pin Pin, filmmaker from Singapore.
Both "Next Masters" awards honour filmmakers who are still at the beginning of their careers. The prize money is intended to support the next generation of filmmakers and to help finance their next film project. Stephan Seeger, Managing Director of Media Foundation and Director Foundations of Sparkasse Leipzig, congratulates: "Classically observing documentation on the one hand, experimental animation on the other - this year's winners of the Next Masters competitions Julia Gutweniger and Florian Kofler as well as Mykyta Lyskov show impressively that young filmmakers master the varieties of documentary and animated film across the entire spectrum. For their future way, Media Foundation wishes 'its' prizewinners to preserve their belief in the narrative power of images".
Since 2004, Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig has supported the DOK Leipzig with the endowment of prize money for outstanding young films.
About "Sicherheit123": The 72-minute film by Julia Gutweniger and Florian Kofler documents man's efforts to "domesticate" the natural landscape of the Alps as a leisure landscape. With a mostly invisible safety system, nature is interfered with, and protective precautions against falling rocks or avalanches are taken to ensure that people can walk on and live in it without fear. The landscape is constantly measured and the emergency simulated, whether in computer models, test facilities or large-scale disaster exercises. The film shows this from a restrained, observing perspective in impressive atmospheric images.
About "Deep Love" ("Kohannia"): In 14 breathtaking, almost crazy minutes Mykyta Lyskov draws a picture of his homeland, the Ukraine: The American bald eagle flies over a city with a star-shaped cloaca and throws an egg, whose impact provides for an ascending nuclear mushroom. Comrade Lenin bursts his head. A convinced man jumps headlong into a waterless pool and everywhere the facades are painted blue and yellow. In his 2D animation, Lyskov sums up the distortions of a sometimes chaotic, but always exhausting national process of self-discovery.