Carl Mayer Screenplay Prize 2024

Theme 2024: “Intoxication”

For an anonymously submitted fictional or documentary treatment suitable for cinema.

Prize money: € 15,000 (main prize) and € 7,500 (sponsorship prize), initiated, organised and donated by the City of Graz Department of Culture as part of the Diagonale.

Jury 2024:
Sebastian Höglinger (jury chairman), Felix von Boehm (producer), Thomas Mraz (actor), Franziska Pflaum (filmmaker), Françoise von Roy (dramaturge)

Main prize, endowed with € 15,000, to:
| Soldat | Treatment by Vivian Bausch and Fabian Rausch

Excerpt from the jury statement:
“An 11-year-old girl in a military jacket. When Kathi marches through the prefabricated housing estate in Linz-Auwiesen, the oversized textile is both armour and camouflage. Clearly too big for her age, the girl remains an outsider at school. In contrast, the superbly drawn teenage boys’ clique promises warmth and lightness. Soldat describes a constant, reciprocal transit between worlds – being a child, teenager and adult, searching and arriving. The father figures are absent and fail, while the mothers drift between being overwhelmed and caring. Even in the most tragic moments, Soldat preserves the dignity of his characters, a multi-dimensionality that is rarely seen in such early stages of material development.”

Sponsorship award, endowed with € 7,500, to:
| Ilvie (renaissance) | Treatment by Elena Wolff

Excerpt from the jury statement:
“Ilvie (renaissance) impresses with its immediacy and ruthlessness, with the seriousness with which young realities of life are described and portrayed. The tone is frighteningly to the point, Vanilla Sky plays on the mobile phone, nails are done, stupid things are committed. Always expecting that the charade cannot go well, we follow the protocol of self-destruction and reinvention. A portrait of our cynical present. But – and this is what already makes Ilvie (reniassance) so special – it is also the loving embrace of a longing (for belonging).”