NRW Supports Graduates: 100,000 Euros for Five Talented Graduation Film Makers
At its 27th graduation film meeting, the Film and Media Foundation NRW awarded 20,000 euros each to five projects. Funding was provided for graduation projects by students at the ifs International Film School Cologne and the Cologne Academy of Media Arts. Family-related themes are often at the forefront of these projects.
Short Film
PAIN SPEAKS ITS OWN LANGUAGE – 20,000 euros
Director: Ruhan Kaygalak
School: ifs, Cologne
Miran is six years old and is growing up bilingually in Germany in a Kurdish-German family. Family life changes dramatically when his father’s sister dies. Deeply affected by this personal loss, his father, Sevket, becomes distant, even though he is physically present. Miran understands the change on an emotional level but cannot yet make sense of it rationally. He must learn what loss means and, in doing so, begins to learn a new language—one that is universal.
SONNENSTICH - 20,000 euros
Director: Elias Förderer
Film School: ifs, Cologne
Sixteen-year-old Bela visits his father, Alex, on the northern Italian coast. But when he realizes that Alex has fallen back into the patterns of an old addiction, a painful journey begins that tests the limits of what love and responsibility can achieve. Förderer’s short film “Knallrot” has already been screened at international film festivals. His documentary debut, “Safe Space,” won the Collaborative Award at the Encourage Film Talents competition. “Sonnenstich” is also the graduation film of Caio Salles Ackermann, who is studying Creative Production at ifs.
DICKER ALS WASSER - 20,000 euros
Director: Kat Schmitz
University: ifs, Cologne
A sister accepts her brother’s invitation to join an agricultural rehabilitation program for convicted sex offenders. A struggle over power, responsibility, forgiveness, and the question of whether blood is truly thicker than water. At the 48h Challenge, “Translucent,” directed by Schmitz, won the Jury’s Grand Prize. Producer Karla Emilia Kristen is completing her ifs degree in Creative Production with this drama.
THE WORLD... BIGGER THAN MARGOT RETANA! - 20,000 euros
Director: Nahia Garcia de Andoin
University: KHM, Cologne
In a city on the banks of the Rhine, trapped in an anachronistic time between 1929 and 2030, the world is undergoing a crisis that goes far beyond the economic and has also engulfed the film industry. During a shoot, director and actress Alberta loses everything. She dissociates and becomes her own character. On the street—overlooked and left behind—she discovers a new perspective on cinema and society. In addition to her studies at the KHM, Garcia de Andoin studied photography at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Her debut film, “Katalinen Kanthoria,” premiered at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival.
PUMO - 20,000 euros
Director: Vincent Graf
University: KHM, Cologne
When Antonella’s mother tells her that she is to inherit the overgrown family property in Italy, she is thrust into a farcical, endless waiting game of German-Italian bureaucracy—all while under the constant pressure of her superstitious mother. Graf studied at Dortmund University of Applied Sciences before enrolling at the KHM. “Nonna,” his first project there, premiered in the German competition at DOK Leipzig and was this year’s opening film at the Stranger than Fiction Documentary Film Festival.