| 'Das Leben der Anderen' takes nine Lolas |
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| Written by the editor | |
| Monday, 15 May 2006 | |
 The winners of Das Leben der Anderen on stage, together with Erna Baumbauer. Photo (c): Michael Tinnefeld, Deutsche Filmakademie. The national German Film Prizes, the Lolas, were awarded on Friday evening in Berlin, with the Stasi spy-drama Das leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) confirming its front-runner status by cashing in on seven of its eleven nominations, including the Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay prizes. The film directed by newcomer Florian Henckel-Donnersmarck tells the story of the state informants used by the former East German government to keep everyone – even the average Joe – in check. The film is set in East-Berlin in the mid-1980s, still several years before the fall of the Berlin wall. Actor Ulrich Mühe, himself born in East-Germany, won the Best Actor prize for his portrayal of a secret service agent who is assigned to follow a successful playwright and an actress, who are a couple, and report on their doings. Ulrich Tukur took the Best Supporting Actor statue for his role as the superior of Mühe’s character. The film has become a box office hit in Germany upon its release several weeks ago and has received much praise for Henckel-Donnersmarck’s now award-winning direction and screenplay. It has really hit a nerve with people from former East-Germany, who say that his portrayal of events is very close to the way things happened in East-Germany until two decades ago, even though the director is a West-German born in 1973 and thus has no first-hand knowledge of any of the events portrayed. The period drama also went home with the Lolas for Best Cinematography, for Hagen Bogdanski, and Best Production Design for Silke Buhr. The runner-up when it came to nominations, with a total of nine, was the Berlinale entry Requiem, an exorcism drama based on a true story set in 1970s. The Hans-Christian Schmid-directed film was a critical success but failed to be a box office hit. At the Lola ceremony actress Sandra Hüller was awarded the Best Actress Lola (whose Silver Bear equivalent she had already won in Berlin), and he colleague Imogen Koge, who plays the mother of Hüller’s character, won the Best Supporting Actress statue. The film also took home the gold in the Best Costume Design and Best Sound categories and won one of the two Silver Lolas or runners-up in the Best Film category. The other feature to win a Silver Best Film Lola was also a Berlinale entry: Knallhart (Tough Enough), about rough life on the Berlin streets. The film, directed by actor-director Detlev Buck, cashed in on all three nominations: besides Best Film it also won in the Best Score and Best Editing categories. The Best Children’s Film according to the 700-odd voters of the German Film Academy was the look at Mongolian life called Die Höhle des gelben Hundes (The Cave of the Yellow Dog), from director Byambasuren Davaa. Two years ago he had been nominated in the Best Documentary category for his first German-produced Mongolian feature Die Geschichte vom weinenden Kamel (The Story of the Weeping Camel), for which he also received an Oscar nomination. This year’s Best Documentary was Lost Children, which investigates the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, which kidnaps and forces children to become soldiers. It won over the international festival favourite Die Grosse Stille (Into Great Silence), a contemplative, three-hour meditation on life at the Grand Chartreuse monastery in France. |
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