04/10/2012 - The German film-maker Pola Beck has won the Golden Eye for her first-time feature Breaking Horizons

The German film-maker Pola Beck won the Golden Eye for her first-time feature Breaking Horizons (photo), which was presented in the German Language Feature Film competition at the 8th Zurich Film Festival (ZFF). In the film, a 25-year-old ex-student finds herself pregnant after a night of passion with a charming barman she met at a party. She begins to see her pregnancy as a chance, but then the gynecologist has some bad news for her.

Breaking Horizons deals with "a rarely addressed subject in a sensitive, emotional way in very consistent, precise picture", said German singer/actor and jury president Herbert Groenemeyer. The script was written by Burkhardt Wunderlich. The film was produced by the Alin Filmproduktion in collaboration with the HFF film school, the German TV station RBB and ARTE. The international feature film award went to the British adolescent drama Broken [+see also:
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In total, the Zurich Film Festival presented 120 films from 22 countries. "The films are quite different", underlined Karl Spoerri, who directs the festival with Nadja Schildknecht. "If there is something like a common thread it is about freedom and self-determination." The film-makers are also prying to enter uncharted territory.

In the documentary section, the ZFF had various extraordinary contributions to offer. Gerald Igor Hauzenberger's Austrian film Der Prozess about an arrested animal-rights activist received the Golden Eye in the German language documentary competition. Among the international highlights were the Swedish entry Woman With Cows about an old stubborn farmer as well as the long-term study 16 Acres by Richard Hankin.

The New York-based filmmaker points out why it has taken so long to erect a new building at Ground Zero. His interview partners include the real-estate investor Larry Silverstein, who had signed a lease for the Trade Towers seven weeks before the 9/11 attacks, the architect Daniel Libeskind as well as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The audience award was given to the Swiss documentary Appassionata, a portrait of a concert pianist from Kiev who moved to Switzerland after Chernobyl and left her family behind. Filmmaker Christian Labhart accompanied her on this trip back to her roots. "It is the music that triggers the emotions in the cinema," said Festival Director Nadja Schildknecht, which is why the festival has launched an international Film Music Competition. Composers from all over the world were asked to create a score for symphony orchestra to the short film Evermore by Swiss film-maker Philip Hofmaenner.

In addition, the ZFF kicked off the new initiative Filmboutique with projects and works-in-progress by German, Swiss and Austrian filmmakers. German industry representatives as world sales agents, distributors and financiers came to this first look event to get an overview over upcoming projects. "We work very hard to make sure that the Zurich Film Festival continues to develop," explained Schildknecht. This year, she closed more than one hundred contracts with marketing partners. The budget of the festival added up to 5.7 million CHF. "The sponsors are very present at our festival but we integrate them in a discreet way," Schildknecht added. "We don't have any sponsors on stage because that would take away the glamour."

Among the famous stars in Zurich were John Travolta, Helen Hunt, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Heather Graham, Emmanuelle Riva, Ashar Farhadi and the German film-maker Tom Tykwer, who received a career achievement award. "I take this distinction as an encouragement award for the next 20 years," Tykwer said.