Diagonale
Diagonale
Diagonale
Diagonale
Festival of Austrian Film
March 18 – 23, 2026, Graz

endowed with

€ 6,000 — donated by the Cultural Department of the City of Graz

and a voucher over
€ 2,000 for dramaturgical advice — donated by Golden Girls Filmproduktion

and a voucher over
€ 2,000 for post-production services at post.haus, including color grading — donated by post.haus & colourist Susi Dollnig, AAC

The prize money will be awarded to the director of the film, the voucher to the film’s production company. All Austrian experimental, animated and innovative short films as well as music videos presented in the Diagonale ’26 competition program will be selected for the Innovative Cinema Award.

| Diagonale Award Innovative Cinema 2026 |
| by the City of Graz |

| BEST INNOVATIVE, EXPERIMENTAL or ANIMATION FILM |

Georg Petermichl
Amature Enlightenment

Jury Statement:
Ask the parents instead of the AI.
The camera shows the artist Georg Petermichl alternating between walks in the woods with his father and with his mother. Curious like a child, the son pesters his parents with questions about God and the world — at once banal and essential. Their answers come promptly, full of empathy and solid middle-class virtue.

Like a triangular family constellation, Amature Enlightenment shifts between radical self-exposure and — back in the family home — a Thomas Bernhard-like abyss. Just as Petermichl’s privacy both hurts and soothes, his cinematic undertaking becomes a moving-image manifesto of a strange ambivalence, articulated with plain and deliberate simplicity.

Jury Innovative Cinema:
Josef Dabernig (Artist & Filmmaker, AT)
Anna Jermolaewa (Artist, AT)
Pieternel Vermoortel (Curator & Author, AT/BE)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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