| Diagonale Award Short Documentary 2025 |

| FOR BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY FILM BY KULTUM. |

Josephine Ahnelt
lll

Jury Statement:
Speaking about illness – especially one’s own, and even more so an illness as severe as mantle cell lymphoma – requires a high level of trust between the affected person and their interlocutor. In artistic work, it carries a great responsibility. Filmmaker Josephine Ahnelt meets this challenge with impressively precise filmmaking. Coming from analog film, Ahnelt selects her film formats according to the narrative necessities and possibilities, blending precisely framed film shots with video fragments and selfies of the protagonist. The different materials come together in an enlightening and exact way to form a larger cinematic narrative.

The empathy and camaraderie that the director builds with her protagonist throughout the film make this work a great gift. Albert Farkas is a disarming and ruthlessly humorous protagonist whose reflection goes beyond his own illness story. The film also poses questions about the connection between illness, transgenerational trauma, and how this is dealt with within a circle of friends.

In doing so, the film succeeds in capturing the profound thoughts of the protagonist and transforming them into an open, hope-inspiring cinematic narrative, making it a cinematic stroke of luck!

Jury Short Documentary
Anatol Bogendorfer (Director, Producer, AT)
Bernhard Hetzenauer (Director, AT)
Angelika Reitzer (Writer, Director, AT)