Success for talents from NRW in Locarno: four prizes for "Touched" by Claudia Rorarius and "A Good Place" by Katharina Huber

• Ísold Halldórudóttir and Stavros Zafeiris are recognised for their acting performances in "Touched
• "A Good Place": Katharina Huber receives the award for Best Emerging Director, Clara Schwinning for her acting performance

The 76th Locarno Film Festival (2-12.8.2023) ended with a total of four prizes to two Filmstiftung-backed productions – "Touched" by Claudia Rorarius and "A Good Place" by Katharina Huber. Both films made in North Rhine-Westphalia has been invited to screen in the Filmmakers of the Present competitive section for emerging talents. 

Petra Müller, CEO of the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW: "Congratulations to the award winners and their teams, especially to Katharina Huber, who won the award for Best Emerging Director, and to director Claudia Rorarius whose courageous and moving work struck a chord with critics and audiences alike and was an award hopeful from early on. This is a great success for NRW!"

Both lead actors – the Icelandic model and activist Ísold Halldórudóttir and the paraplegic Greek dancer Stavros Zafeiris – were awarded two Leopards for best acting performances in the arthouse drama "Touched" (production company: 2Pilots Filmproduction, dir/scr: Claudia Rorarius) . They accepted the awards in person today.

The Filmmakers of the Present section had also invited the production "A Good Place" which was shot in the Eifel region. Director-producer Katharina Huber (Acker Film) received the Best Emerging Director Award of the City and Region of Locarno for her debut feature. A Leopard for best acting performance went to Clara Schwinning.

Film- und Medienstiftung hosted a "Meet & Greet” with German Films

The award-winning filmmakers and numerous representatives of the film industry came together on Sunday, 6 August, for the "Meet & Greet" hosted by the festival’s industry platform Locarno Pro with the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW and German Films. Markus Duffner, Head of Locarno Pro, announced the winners of the industry awards in the presence of the festival’s artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro.

The documentary film "This Kind of Hope" by Pawel Siczek was shown in the Panorama Suisse programme last weekend. The director had received a Gerd Ruge Grant from the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW in 2014 to develop the project. The film tells the story of top diplomat Andrei Sannikov who was involved in his country’s nuclear disarmament after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in Belarus.