Almost 100 films were shown at the Mountain Film Festival in Tegernsee this year.
The winners have now been chosen at the closing ceremony in the baroque hall.
It was a first step back to normal.
Tegernsee
- It was a somewhat different mountain film festival, which after a one-year mandatory break, lured film buffs to Tegernsee, where they were able to see 94 films in 44 screenings in five days.
A festival with light-filled halls and an economical supporting program.
The way back to cultural life is long and not that easy, said festival director Michael Pause on Saturday at the beginning of the closing ceremony in the baroque hall.
He was all the more pleased that the competition was never in question at the festival.
Top sporting performance and touching images
The award-winning films took viewers - for the first time also in a live stream - to a wide variety of mountain regions, showed top sporting and camera performance and many touching images of archaically beautiful landscapes, in which life is by no means just contemplative.
Himalaya-Film receives the grand prize of the city of Tegernsee
Like Zara Balfours and Marcus Stephenson's documentary “Children of the Snowland”, which was awarded the city of Tegernsee's grand prize.
Breathtaking Himalayan landscape that arouses wanderlust in every alpinist, but at the same time leaves one with an oppressive feeling.
It is also the backdrop for a life full of privation, in which five- and six-year-old children have to leave their parents' homes for years in order to go to school in the capital and have a better life for once.
The long journey to remote valleys alone is a challenge for the girl and the two boys whom the film accompanies when they return to their families for the first time after twelve years of separation.
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At the end, the award winners, organizers and jury members gathered again on the stage.
© Thomas Plettenberg
Unvarnished insights into the tough mountain life
And there is the moving documentation of a collapsing ice cave in the Spanish Pyrenees that cost ten people their lives on a supposedly simple tour.
There is the unvarnished cinematic view of life on a Ticino alpine pasture, which does not have much of the glorified romance of getting out in the mountains.
Or the story of the village school teacher in Iran, told in wonderful pictures, who goes with shepherds to teach the children, who sit with shining eyes on fluorescent green meadows and enjoy their lessons in the open air surrounded by mountains.
Jury members had also retired to the home office
“It was impressive what a wide range of topics there were,” said author and mountain film expert Stefan König on behalf of the jury, whose work this year was very different than in other years.
Instead of watching films together, the jurors also withdrew to the home office.
It was particularly interesting that the notes with the shortlist of Julia Brunner, Sebastian Marseiler, Thijs Horbach, Titus Arnu and himself were very similar in content.
Choosing a winner from this made the very high level particularly difficult.
The local filmmaker Valentin Rapp also won
Among others, Valentin Rapp landed at the top, who discovered the local mountains long before Corona with professional slackliner Lukas Irmler for “Alpine Highlines”.
Caroline Fink from Zurich, who snuck outside because she simply couldn't stand it at home in the strict first lockdown after two weeks of the city.
And Ignasi López Fàbregas, who won the Tegernsee award for the second time after 2015 with his wonderfully pointed animation film “El gran hito”.
Regret rang through in the words of Tegernsee's Mayor Johannes Hagn as he bid farewell to the award winners, jury and guests of honor.
Regret for the all too small circle in which one had to meet.
Not even the founding fathers Peter Janssen and Robert Staudacher would have found a place in the illustrious circle.
Mayor: "We hope for the next year"
Nevertheless: Even if the first step back into reality was small, one could at least focus on the essentials.
"Now we hope for the next year," said the mayor.
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