Inspired by real-life events, the World War II drama John Rabe won the 2009 German Film Academy's Lola for best film. Directed by Florian Gallenberger, John Rabe tells the story of a German businessman (best actor winner Ulrich Tukur) credited with saving more than 200,000 Chinese during the Nanjing (then Nanking) massacre of 1937-38.
Additionally, John Rabe, which has been a box-office disappointment in Germany, won Lolas for best production design (Tu Ju Hua) and best costume design (Lisy Christl). I believe it's safe to say that Gallenberger's film will be Germany's submission for the 2010 best foreign-language film Academy Award. And that it'll land an Oscar nomination.
The best director Lola went to Andreas Dresen for the popular Cloud 9, in which veteran actress Ursula Werner plays a sixty-something married woman who rediscovers love and sex outside of home.
Özgür Yildirim's feature-film debut, Chiko, a gangster drama set in a tough immigrant neighborhood in Hamburg, nabbed Lolas for best editing (Sebastian Thumler) and best screenplay (Yildirim).
The documentary Lola was given to Niko von Glasow's NoBody's Perfect, featuring about a dozen people born disabled (including the director) due to side effects from the drug Thalidomide, a medication given to pregnant women in the mid-20th century. The subjects then agree to pose naked for an art calendar.
Uli Edel's box-office hit and Oscar-nominated drama The Baader Meinhof Complex, about the terrorist group of the 1970s, failed to win a single award.