| Diagonale Acting Awards 2026 |

in Cooperation with the VdFS – the Film Industry’s Collecting Society for
| REMARKABLE PERFORMANCES BY AUSTRIAN ACTORS |
in a Competition Film of the Diagonale ’26

Valerie Pachner
Vier minus drei

Jury Statement:
In her performance, emotional intensity emerges without pathos; her restrained acting illuminates an emotional world shaken to its very foundations, one in which the deepest grief must still make room for clownish comedy. She is a revelation — the beating heart of this film, in which a woman, after the accidental death of her family, must redefine, indeed reinvent, her life.

The acting jury unanimously voted to award Valerie Pachner the Diagonale Acting Prize for her sensitive and nuanced character portrait of a woman balancing her life between pain and hope.

Julia Franz Richter
Welcome Home Baby and Mother’s Baby

Jury Statement:
Female self-determination and loss of control are at the center of two films in which she embodies two very different roles. One of her characters experiences growing uncertainty and an eerie loss of control in an environment that becomes at once unfamiliar and familiar to her. Old traumas resurface.

While the present turns into a nightmare in one role, in the second film her character contributes significantly to the psychological tensions of a young mother. The range of her performance — spanning vulnerability, overwhelm, inner strength, and the opacity of a supposedly helpful character — convinced the jury to award Julia Franz Richter the Diagonale Acting Prize for her subtle performances in Welcome Home Baby and Mother’s Baby.

Jury Acting Awards:
Ute Baumhackl (Chief Reporter for Culture & Society, Kleine Zeitung, AT)
Roland Koch (Actor & Director, AT/CH)
Christian Konrad (Head of Film Department, ORF, AT)
Sona MacDonald (Actor & Singer, AT)
Alexandra Makarová (Screenwriter & Director, AT)