Overview
- Opera by Croatian filmmaker Igor Zelić, which jurors called an ode to cinema, won the €8,000 Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen at the Lichtburg Filmpalast on Sunday and also took the NRW Ministry’s top award and the FIPRESCI critics’ prize.
- The International Jury’s €4,000 award went to Yu Zhe’s Hei Dong Dong (Dark Channel) from China, praised for turning an everyday tunnel into a work of art through close visual observation.
- In the German Competition, Dagie Brundert won €5,000 for Audry Lornacle or 14 Days in DJ’s House, a Super 8 documentary capturing a two‑week stay in filmmaker Derek Jarman’s seaside cottage.
- The NRW Competition first prize of €1,000 went to Miri Klischat for The Garden of Edie, a biographical film about a woman who pursues writing while working as a sex worker.
- The 72nd edition ran April 28 to May 3, screened nearly 500 shorts from 59 countries, and centered a program called Based on true events that probed the line between reality and fiction as AI-generated images spread.