18/07/2003

A press release issued on 17 July by the Federal German parliament announced that three Berlin-based theatrical distributors are to share this year’s award for their excellent contribution to creating awareness about films of artistic and cultural value.
The three winners, Alamode Film, Salzgeber & Co. Medien and X Verleih will each receive a cheque for €100,000 from Germany’s culture minister, Christina Weiss, on 18 September in Hamburg. The money is to be used to distribute quality German and European films in the domestic market.

Alamode Film, which was set up in 1921, won for its " having in a short period of time conquered a significant slice of the domestic film market and because of the preferential treatment the distributor accords to quality over quantity" reads the motivation. Alamode was behind the German releases of Majid Majidi’s Baran, Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention and Argentine Diego Lerman’s Tan de repente (winner of a Locarno Leopard in 2002).
Salzgeber won for having distributed "political documentaries of great importance" including Bernau liegt an Meer by Martina Döcker and presented at the 2003 Berlinale in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section, Bunker. The Last Days by Gavin Hodge and Martina Reuter, and Switzerland’s Elizabeth Kübler Ross – Seeing Death Face-On by Stefan Haupt.
The jury was keen to reward the close interaction between directors and producers at X Verleih, the company behind hits like Tom Tykwer’s Heaven [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Fatih Akin’s Solino and Wolfgang Becker’s Goodbye Lenin! [+see also:
trailer
interview: Wolfgang Becker
film profile]. The motivation reads that X Verleih "succeeded in creating critical and popular consensus for quality auteur-driven films."

(Translated from Italian)