Filmmaker Karin Berger is awarded the Austrian Art Award for Film by the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport, in recognition of her work to date.

From the jury's statement: Karin Berger is a pioneer in a present in which the disappearance of the generation that experienced the Nazi era is a painful fact. She shapes feminist art practice, is a talented interviewer and recognized teacher. Her work shows that history is never closed and that the cinematic recording of the unnoticed shapes the future.

We can only agree with this – and in this context also point to Wankostättn, her most recent work to date. Our warmest congratulations!

This year's Outstanding Artist Awards have been announced. It is an exceptional pleasure for us to highlight the film and culture professionals among the award winners, some of whom have been associated with sixpackfilm for many years.

Selma Doborac receives the Outstanding Artist Award for her “precise and intellectually challenging work, in which she examines the rhetoric of words, images and ideologies (...) Her documentary essay films, such as It was a day like any other in spring or summer (2012) and Those Shocking Shaking Days (2016), reflect her intense engagement with the medium of film and the themes of war, memory and historiography. (...) Her previous masterpiece, De Facto (2023), is a scenic tour de force about perpetrators and perpetrator language.”
(From the jury statement for the Outstanding Artist Award 2024 in the Documentary Essay category)

“Austria has been waiting for a filmmaker like Mo Harawe, who creates complex and wise films despite his young age. He is an important voice for the future of Austrian film and a role model for others not to let any system get them down,” reads the jury's citation for Mo Harawe, who was awarded in the feature film category and recently celebrated the premiere of his feature film debut The Village Next to Paradise at the renowned film festival in Cannes. “His poetic film language allows us to perceive the invisible and paints a picture of Somalia that is far removed from clichés and stories of radicalization. His films use minimal dialog that hints at political causes without providing simple answers.”
Mo Harawe's last two short works can be found in the sixpackfilm distribution catalog: Life on the Horn (2020) and Will My Parents Come To See Me (2022).

The artist and filmmaker Olena Newkryta, one of the country's most interesting young voices, was also honored in the media art category. “Newkryta's works address the unequal relationships between knowledge, power and re/production in our technological world. She sheds light on the material, emotional and psychological effects of technological patterns and logics,” says the jury statement. Most recently, her work Patterns Against Workers (2023) was awarded the prize for best medium-length film at the Duisburg Documentary Film Week. 

We are delighted for and with Selma, Mo and Olena and congratulate all the prizewinners from the bottom of our hearts!