Grand Diagonale Acting Prize 2024

for services to Austrian film culture

Lukas Miko

Lukas Miko © Diagonale/Lilly Moerz

As part of the festival opening, on April 4, 2024 the Diagonale will award the Grand Diagonale Acting Prize for services to Austrian film culture for the 17th time. This year the award goes to the extraordinary character actor Lukas Miko. The actor, author and filmmaker will accept the award, presented by WIENER TIMES, in person in Graz on the opening evening.

We at Diagonale express our warmest congratulations!

Jury Statement
“It is impossible to imagine screens in Austria without his presence. The characters he embodies gain in color and depth thanks to his acting. For many years, Lukas Miko has been one of the great standbys of Austrian film as an artist who always puts himself at the service of the work with confident dedication. His outstanding performances range from the student Max in Michael Haneke’s 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994) to the drug addict in Adrian Goiginger’s The Best of All Worlds (2017), the overwhelmed asylum director in David Clay Diaz’s Me, We (2021) to the journalist who uncovers an assault scandal in the Austrian Ski Association in Antonin Svoboda’s Persona Non Grata.
Miko is always incisive, always profound. And he is also the rare case of a quick-change artist who acts without vanity – this can also be seen in his roles in the films The Night of 1000 Hours, Mademoiselle Paradis, Angelo, Chess Story and Stella: A Life.

The fact that he, like many extraordinary character actors, leaves lasting impressions not only with leading and title roles, but also always for his intelligent, multidimensional acting, his sharply drawn characters, and his ensemble awareness, was just one more reason for the acting jury to unanimously select him for the Grand Diagonale Acting Prize for 2024.”

Biography
Lukas Miko (born April 4, 1971) is an award-winning actor, screenwriter, and director. Born in Vienna, he trained as an actor at the renowned Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique in Paris.
Miko then played in the ensembles of the Residenztheater in Munich and the Burgtheater in Vienna, among others, and worked as a freelance stage actor in various productions. In addition to his stage work, Miko is one of Austria’s most prominent film and television actors. He was awarded the 2018 Austrian Film Prize for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the heroin-addicted stepfather in Adrian Goiginger’s The Best of All Worlds. At the award ceremony, Miko gave a highly acclaimed speech in which he, as one of the initiators of #KlappeAuf, spoke out against incitement of xenophobia and populism , and in favor of solidarity. Miko received the Diagonale Acting Prize in 2021 for his role in Me, We. Behind the camera, Miko also works as a screenwriter and filmmaker. He filmed his first screenplay in 2006 under the title The Frozen Sea, and the 30-minute film was awarded the Golden Lola for the best German short film in 2007, among other prizes.
Lukas Miko is represented at the upcoming Diagonale by two films,
firstly as a journalist in Persona Non Grata by Antonin Svoboda in the Annual Review, and secondly in the short film Er so Sie so by Benjamin Heisenberg.

The Prize: An Artistic Commodity
In the area of encounter between design, craftsmanship, art and decor, the WIENER TIMES label , which comprises Susanne Schneider and Johannes Schweiger, produces objects of everyday. use The products actively question and push the boundaries between abstraction and function.

Made possible by:
legero united – the shoemakers | Initiator of con-tempus.eu.