Diagonale Prize Editing ’24

for Best Artistic Editing for a Feature Film of the Film Editing Association aea

Leandro Koch, Javier Favot
The Klezmer Project

Jury statement: How to tell a story about something that has largely disappeared, been wiped out? The Yiddish language, klezmer music… the film The Klezmer Project responds to this challenge, to this cinematically difficult object, with playful narrative joy. The editing constellates the disparate: the Yiddish text in the soundtrack is joined by a completely contemporary love story in the image, making the Yiddish language tangible. At the same time, the film traces the living traditional music of Eastern Europe with an exuberant abundance and shows us the unknown landscape of Ukraine, Romania and Moldavia in passing. The editing allows us to participate in the process of making the film itself, following the director’s personal search for family traces like a road movie and thus linking the very different strands of the film. These successful interweavings are the result of a montage that gives the viewer a pleasant sense of risk-taking. A long, uncut tracking shot poetically concludes this courageous film, a hybrid of documentary and feature film.

for Best Artistic Editing for a Documentary Film of the Film Editing Association aea

Sara Fattahi
Anqa

Jury statement: Ultimately, meticulously filmed fragments come together to tell a story of violence suffered by three generations of women. Bit by bit, more and more connections become clear, until finally the secret is unravelled and the exit from the trauma can be experienced as a utopia through the montage.

Jury Feature Film:
Ortrun Bauer (cinematographer, editor, AT)
Elena Meilicke (film critic, DE)
Silvan Zürcher (director, CH)

Jury Documentary Film:
Dunja Bialas (film publicist, festival director, DE)
Tsveta Dobreva (Festival Director, FR)
Cem Kaya (Director, DE)