73rd Radio Play Award for the War-Blind Features Three Categories for the First Time – The Nominees!
For the 73rd edition of the War Blind Radio Play Award, a six-member jury has nominated nine outstanding and creative audio productions. The prestigious award, sponsored by the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW and the German Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (DBSV), will be presented on December 10, 2025, in Cologne.
Following a fundamental reorientation, three equal prizes will be awarded for the first time in 2025, reflecting the breadth of contemporary audio storytelling. From numerous submissions, the jury has selected relevant and outstanding productions in every respect across the three categories. This year’s nominees are:
Category: “Documentary Podcast”
Südwestrundfunk: “Dark Matters – Secrets of the Intelligence Services – ‘Two Shots to the Heart – Why Did My Uncle Have to Die?’”
Authors: Kilian Pfeffer, Christopher Jähnert, Kirsten Tromnau
Synopsis: Robert Pfeffer, a foreign correspondent for STERN, was shot and killed under mysterious circumstances by a hit squad in Beirut in 1979. To this day, it remains unclear who was behind the murder.
Directors: Iris Drögekamp, Johannes Bischofberger
Editors: Johannes Bischofberger, Christopher Jähnert / Marc Bürkle
Production: SWR3 and rbb24 Inforadio 2025
Broadcast Date: April 30, 2025
Bayerischer Rundfunk: “I Will Survive – The Fight Against the AIDS Crisis”
Writers: Niklas Eckert, Sarah Fischbacher, Meret Reh, Judith Rubatscher, and Phillip Syvarth
Synopsis: Munich, the 1980s, the disco era: The queer scene is thriving, and global stars like Freddie Mercury are partying here. But suddenly, it’s all over. A mysterious virus hits the city.
Director: Martin Heindel
Editorial Team: BR Radio Drama Department
Production: Bayerischer Rundfunk 2024
Broadcast Date: May 6, 2025
Podimo: “Otze – Stasi, Punk, and Murder”
Writers: Josi Miller, Alex Barbian
Synopsis: The radical life story of Dieter “Otze” Ehrlich, frontman of the GDR punk band Schleimkeim. The most prominent figure of the former East German punk scene killed his father with an axe in 1999. The podcast explores what it means to be a punk in a dictatorship.
Director: Bernie Mayer / Wake World
Editors: Josi Miller, Alex Barbian, Berni Mayer
Production: Podimo Deutschland GmbH 2024
Air date: May 22, 2024
Category: “Fictional Podcast”
Hessischer Rundfunk: “The Glitter Gang”
Writer: Arne Salasse
Synopsis: An action-packed children’s radio drama series in which three friends solve tricky cases involving socially relevant topics.
Director: Janine Lüttmann
Editors: Gudrun Hartmann, Emely Riemer
Production: HR/NDR 2024
Broadcast date: April 12, 2025
Bayerischer Rundfunk: “My Life as Spam”
Writer: Hans Christoph Böhringer
Synopsis: An 8-part sci-fi series in which bots flood people with fake messages. A government employee suddenly finds herself labeled as spam and must prove that she is human. How does one live when one is excluded from social life due to dehumanization?
Director: Pauline Seiberlich
Editorial Team: BR Radio Drama Department
Production: BR 2024
Broadcast Date: November 7, 2024
Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg: “Zwischenzeiten” (Season 2)
Writer: Tom Peuckert
Synopsis: 1992 – The changes and upheavals in East Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall are told through the story of a young couple and two very different families.
Director: Thomas Leutzbach
Editor: Podcast Team – Contentbox Kultur – Juliane Schmidt
Production: rbb/ARD Audiothek + Radio 3 2024
Broadcast date: September 30, 2024
Category: “Innovative or Artistic Radio Play”
Deutschlandfunk Kultur:“No Names, No One”
Author: Annette Kufner
Synopsis: A documentary radio play that powerfully and emotionally recounts the horrific exclusion, persecution, and ultimate deportation of the Sinti to Auschwitz.
Director: Franziska Stuhr Editor: Barbara Gerland
Production: Dlf 2024
Broadcast date: March 10, 2024
Swiss Radio and Television: “Moetelli – An Encounter with Artificial Intelligence”
Writer: Hermann Bohlen
Synopsis: An AI drama. F. is a writer, a single father, almost broke, and under a lot of pressure: Within two days, he has to write a letter to a troublesome teacher, a eulogy, and a radio play. Only AI can help… or can it?
Director: Judith Lorentz
Editor: Radio Play / Fiction Audio – Mark Ginzler
Production: SRF 2024
Broadcast Date: November 23, 2024
Deutschlandfunk: “Wildly tender is thy music – Songs from the Moor”
Authors: Merzouga (Janko Hanushevsky and Eva Pöpplein)
Synopsis: The Cologne-based sound art duo Merzouga discovers songs for our time in Emily Brontë’s “Poems from the Moor” and transports us to the fascinating world of the moor.
Director: Janko Hanushevsky Editor: Sabine Küchler
Production: Dlr 2025
Broadcast Date: January 18, 2025
Each category is endowed with 5,000 euros. In addition, the winners receive further support from the Film and Media Foundation NRW for their next project. They are also invited to present new project ideas to the Film Foundation, ARD, and Deutschlandradio.
Another new feature is the inclusion of commercial providers. This has created a quality-oriented competition that takes into account both these productions and those from public broadcasters—and that reflects the current reality of the audio market.
The selection was made by a six-member jury consisting of blind, visually impaired, and sighted members, bringing together expertise from various fields such as radio drama, podcasts, cultural journalism, documentaries, literature, and film.
Christine Harrasser (podcaster, creative producer, fiction editor/author, Amazon Publishing) Gaby Hartel (cultural studies scholar, journalist, and radio writer) Dietrich Plückhahn (musician, author, lawyer) Birgit Schulz (documentary filmmaker, author, and producer) Martin Weigert (sound engineer, audio magazine “Egidien – Presse – Rundblick”) Özge Yildiz (creative writing, audio editor for audiobooks and radio plays, Audible)
[caption id="attachment_133624" align="alignnone" width="2560"]
Photos © Claudia Ast (from left to right): The expert jury for the War Blinds Radio Play Award: Gaby Hartel, Christine Harrasser, Özge Yildiz, Martin Weigert, Dietrich Plückhahn, and Birgit Schulz[/caption]
Special Jury Guest: Bibiana Beglau
Actress Bibiana Beglau has been invited to serve as a special jury guest. Among other honors, she has received the Silver Bear for Best Actress, the Grimme Prize, and the German Audiobook Prize. Critics hail her as the “rock ’n’ roll of the German voice acting scene.”
This year, she will help decide the winners.
Bibiana Beglau (Photo: René Fietzek)
“With this reorientation, we’re bringing a time-honored award into the present,” says Walid Nakschbandi, managing director of FMS. “We honor outstanding voices, ideas, and stories—whether told in classic radio plays or in new formats like podcasts.”
Klaus Hahn, an honorary member and the DBSV’s representative for the award, also emphasizes: “Opening the award to new formats across three categories was an important step that has proven to be the right one. The nominations reflect the diversity of today’s audio landscape.”
New Name! Announcement at the Awards Ceremony on December 10, 2025, in Cologne
This reorientation also means that Germany’s longest-running audio award will have a new name in the future. The new name will be announced during the awards ceremony.
The ceremony will take place on Wednesday, December 10, 2025, in Cologne. (By invitation only / Press accreditation via presse@filmstiftung.de)
There, the winners in the three categories will be honored.
The War-Blind Radio Play Award was founded in 1950 and, since 1952, has been awarded annually to an original radio play conceived for a German-language broadcaster that exemplifies and expands the possibilities of the art form in an outstanding manner. From 1952 to 2019, the Federation of War-Blind People (BKD) was the award’s sponsoring organization. In 1994, the Film and Media Foundation NRW joined as a co-sponsor. In 2020, the DBSV took over co-sponsorship from the BKD. The prize is the most prestigious German award for radio plays. With its new focus, it now recognizes journalistic excellence and creativity even beyond the traditional radio play format.