Kompagnon Fellowship
The annual Kompagnon Fellowship is awarded jointly by Perspektive Deutsches Kino and Berlinale Talents. It’s open to screenwriters and directors based in Germany who were selected for the last edition of Perspektive Deutsches Kino or participated in the Script Station, Doc Station or Short Form Station at the current edition of Berlinale Talents.
The fellowship provides a stipend to develop a screenplay or project, consisting of €5,000 for feature-length projects or €2,500 for short formats. Based on the filmmaker’s individual needs, a mentor is chosen to support and strengthen their artistic signature - whether through coaching or personal consultancy.
The recipients of the 2020 Kompagnon Fellowship are ...
ARCTIC LINK, Doc Station 2020
“Arctic Link” follows the future geography of the Internet. Shot on a cable-laying vessel in the open seas, the film unveils notions of longing and nostalgia in the space of the World Wide Web, blurring the lines between physical reality and the virtual sphere.
Jury Statement: “Arctic Link by Ian Purnell is a hybrid documentary and a visual essay. There is a ship in the Arctic. It will lay the longest fiber optic cable under the eternal ice to provide the world with faster internet connections. This is only possible due to climate change. The hybrid documentary Arctic Link by Ian Purnell combines the stories of the people on the ship with the reality of life in the Arctic village and in virtual love stories. Moreover, it relates human desires to the irreversible effects of our actions on the planet. We are looking forward to an impressive visual journey into the heart of the darkness of our present age.”
111, Perspektive Deutsches Kino
No longer able to accept her news channel’s restrictions, Bulgarian journalist Miroluba Benatova starts driving a cab so she can continue to report independently. “111” follows her journey through a country that ranks 111th worldwide and last in the EU for press freedom.
Jury Statement: “What are we ready to give up for our freedoms? The Bulgarian journalist Miroluba Benatova could no longer accept the new conditions of her news channel. Voluntarily, she went into the precarious situation of working as a taxi driver so that she could continue telling the stories of the people in her country. The director Hristiana Raykova accompanies Miroluba Benatova on her journeys. Passengers become the reflection of a society, in a country that ranks 111th in the world and last in the EU in terms of freedom of the press. In order to give form to the courage and determination of this clever rebellion, we would like to award the Kompagnon-Fellowship to Hristiana Raykova’s film 111.”
