German Film Academy’s 2006 Lola Award Winners
May 12th, 2006 by Andre Soares
German Film Academy’s 2006 Lola Award Winners: Das Leben der Anderen / The Lives of Others, a quite timely political drama about a government eavesdropping on its citizens, won seven Lola Awards at a ceremony held yesterday at the Palais am Funkturm in Berlin.
Besides the Golden Award for Best Film (worth €500,000/approx. US$640,000), Das Leben der Anderen won awards for Best Director (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), Best Actor (Ulrich Mühe), Best Supporting Actor (Ulrich Tukur), Best Screenplay (von Donnersmarck), Best Cinematography (Hagen Bogdanski), and Best Production Design (Silke Buhr). Das Leben der Anderen is set in East Germany, where the feared Stasi and its tens of thousands of informants kept tabs on that country’s citizens. Thus far, the film has been seen by more than 800,000 German filmgoers.
Requiem, the tale of a woman who believes she’s been possessed by the devil, won four Lolas, including those for Best Actress Sandra Hüller (who also won the Best Actress Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival) and Best Supporting Actress Imogen Kogge.
Additionally, as one of the two runners-up in the Best Film category, Requiem shared the Silver Prize for Best Film with Hans-Christian Schmid’s Knallhart / Tough Enough, a box-office disappointment that received mixed reviews from German critics. Set in the economically depressed Berlin suburb of Neukölln, Knallhart revolves around the difficult life of a teenager reaching maturity without either parental or social assistance. The film also won Lolas for Editing (Dirk Grau) and Music (Bert Wrede).
The controversial suicide-bomber film Paradise Now, nominated for two Lolas, and Sommer vorm Balkon / Summer in Berlin, nominated for six, failed to win any awards.
Full List of 2006 Lola Film Award Winners and Nominees
Der Spiegel interview with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
2006 Shanghai Film Festival Jury
Cannes Film Festival 2006 Jury
Tom Cruise’s Box-Office Mission
My Dad Is 100 Years Old on the Sundance Channel
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