| Grand Diagonale Acting Award | 2025 |
FOR SERVICES TO AUSTRIAN FILM CULTURE
AWARD WINNER: INGE MAUX
Inge Maux © Saskia Pavek
As part of the festival opening, on March 27, 2025, for the 18th time, the Diagonale will award the Grand Diagonale Acting Award for services to Austrian film culture. This year the award goes to the charismatic and versatile character actress Inge Maux. The actress and artist will accept the award, designed by Maruša Sagadin, in person in Graz on opening night.
We at Diagonale express our warmest congratulations!
JURY STATEMENT
“She is unmistakable. Inge Maux takes on her roles with enormous dedication and without restraint. Whether comedic, dramatic, or tragic, her acting has texture and depth. She always puts herself and the full spectrum of her acting talent entirely at the service of the cause. The result is characters that sparkle. For this reason, she is known as a versatile character actress who couldn’t be more authentic. Over the course of her long career, her art has been seen on the stage and in musicals, in television films and in the cinema, not to mention films such as Christian Frosch’s Murer, Elisabeth Scharang’s Jack, Ulrich Seidl’s Paradies: Liebe and Rimini.
She often plays key characters in the story and proves herself to be one of the great personalities of Austrian film. She is always absorbed in what she is playing: she can be exuberantly funny, deeply touching the next moment, and sometimes even frightening. She knows no vanity, and justifies her roles in such a way that the audience easily discovers warmth and humanity in her characters. Despite all this, there is something ageless about her, a captivating childlike curiosity that makes her, like all the greats in her field, inimitable. The depth, authenticity and subtlety with which she endows all her roles made the jury’s decision an easy one: they voted unanimously to award Inge Maux the Grand Acting Award of this Diagonale for her extraordinary services to Austrian film.”
Inge Maux as Perl Akin in Murer – Anatomie eines Prozesses © Prisma Film
BIOGRAPHY
Inge Maux was born in Upper Austria in 1944. Her uncle, the composer Richard Maux (1893–1971), recognized and encouraged her artistic talent and convinced her parents to let her attend the Schauspielschule Krauss acting school in Vienna. Engagements as an actress took Maux to the Cologne Schauspielhaus and the Zurich Schauspielhaus, followed by further roles in various musicals, including at the Theater an der Wien, the Zurich Opera House and the Raimund Theater. She has also made guest appearances at the Residenztheater in Munich, the Theater an der Josefstadt, the Ernst-Deutsch-Theater in Hamburg, the Sommerspiele Perchtoldsdorf and the Akademietheater, among others. From 2010 to 2014 Maux was a member of the ensemble of the Vienna Volkstheater. In 2024 she made her debut at the Burgtheater in Thomas Bernhard’s play Heldenplatz under the direction of Frank Castorf. Since 2015 she has also devoted an increasing amount of time to filmed performances. In 2016, she was nominated for the Austrian Film Award in the Best Supporting Actor category for her role in Elisabeth Scharang’s Jack. She finally received the award in 2019 for her portrayal of Perl Akin in Christian Frosch’s Murer – Anatomy of a Trial.
Inge Maux lives in Artstetten, Lower Austria, and in addition to her work as an actress and singer, she also works as a photographer and painter. At the upcoming Diagonale, she can be seen in È a questo punto che nasce il bisogno di fare storia by Constanze Ruhm.
THE PRIZE: An Artwork by Maruša Sagadin
The work of Maruša Sagadin (b. 1978 in Ljubljana, Slovenia) operates at the interface between private and public space, and breaks with established codes for viewing works of art. Using humorous methods and exaggerations, she addresses visibility and undermines the social discourse that surrounds her. The designed objects refer to elements of pop and subculture, and the interplay between color and form in her works takes up elements of the present.
Made possible by:
legero united – the shoemakers | Initiator of con-tempus.eu