"Four Minutes" named best picture at German awards
BERLIN (Reuters) - A powerful drama about an elderly piano teacher and her relationship with a young prison convict won best picture at the German Film Prize awards on Friday.
"Vier Minuten" (Four Minutes) took the Lola award worth 500,000 euros ($680,500), decided by more than 800 members of the German Film Academy in Berlin.
It beat the pre-award favorite, "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer," which went into the evening with eight nominations, as did Four Minutes.
"Three nights ago, I dreamt about being here on stage. It's wonderful when dreams come true," said Meike Kordes, who produced Four Minutes together with her sister Alexandra.
The film also picked up the best actress prize, which went to Monica Bleibtreu in the role of the teacher.
Bleibtreu celebrated her birthday on the night of the awards, and the audience spontaneously burst into a rendition of "Happy Birthday" during her speech.
"I will never forget this birthday," she said.
"Wer Frueher Stirbt ist Laenger Tot" (Grave Decisions), a comedy about a young boy coming to terms with the death of his mother, won four awards altogether, including best director given to Marcus H. Rosenmueller.
Played in the Bavarian dialect and screened without subtitles, many German viewers experienced some difficulty in understanding much of the dialogue.
The best actor prize went to Josef Bierbichler for "Winterreise" (Winter Journey), in which he portrays a businessman who faces bankruptcy and in order to rescue the situation decides to do a deal with shady Kenyan gangsters.
The "Lolas," in their 57th year, are Germany's answer to Hollywood's Oscars and are the most lucrative film prize in the world.
The Film Academy picks the German government-sponsored awards worth a total of around 2.8 million euros.
The government underwrites the prizes, which are distributed among dozens of nominated movies as an indirect subsidy to domestic filmmakers.
Their support appears to be bearing fruit, with the German film industry on the rise. Domestic films took 26 percent of the domestic market share in 2006 -- the highest level since the federal film board started keeping records.
Hollywood still dominates the country, but the German share has jumped from 19 percent in 2005.
Last year's big winner, "The Lives of Others" won seven trophies and went on to win the best foreign film Oscar.
Reuters
