Wim Wen­ders Schol­ar­ship for alum­ni of the DFFB

This year the Wim Wen­ders Schol­ar­ship was award­ed for the 7th time by the Film- und Medi­en­s­tiftung NRW and the Düs­sel­dorf Wim Wen­ders Foun­da­tion. The renowned schol­ar­ship assists young film­mak­ers who endeav­our to tell their sto­ries in new ways and to devel­op their projects inde­pen­dent­ly. To this end, the schol­ar­ship hold­ers pro­vide a total of 100,000 euros. In select­ing the projects to be fund­ed, spe­cial atten­tion was paid to orig­i­nal­i­ty and to a strong visu­al con­cept.
Six projects were select­ed for fund­ing from a total of 33 appli­ca­tions. Among the suc­cess­ful appli­cants is a project by two alum­ni of the DFFB: Eliza Petko­va and Con­stanze Schmitt received a schol­ar­ship of 10,000 euros for their film STILLE BEOBACHTER. What is spe­cial about this project is that it tells the sto­ry of ani­mals observ­ing peo­ple, and not the oth­er way around, which gives us an insight into how ani­mals view us humans.
The awardees will stay in con­tact with each oth­er and, above all, with the jury and Wim Wen­ders through reg­u­lar col­lo­quia to com­mu­ni­cate their project’s progress and to sup­port one anoth­er in this devel­op­ment phase.
Wim Wen­ders con­cludes by explain­ing the film indus­try and the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion: “I’m delight­ed that we are using the schol­ar­ship to give these film­mak­ers the time and sup­port they need to devel­op their projects. Espe­cial­ly giv­en these dif­fi­cult times for cin­e­ma, a medi­um so close­ly linked to social inter­ac­tion. More than ever, cin­e­ma needs new forms and cer­tain­ly oth­er forms of pre­sen­ta­tion to strength­en the medium’s col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence.”
Our warmest con­grat­u­la­tions go to Eliza and Constanze—we are very excit­ed about this oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op your project!