These are the winners of the 10th edition of the QUEER-STREIFEN festival Regensburg:
Most popular feature film
The non-monetary Audience Award for the best feature film goes to:
GROSSE FREIHEIT (Great Freedom)
by Sebastian Meise, Austria/Germany, 2021
Audience Awards at € 200
per short film programme:
BEFORE THE ERUPTION
Roberto Pérez Toledo, Spain, 2020
FAKE
Lou-Brice Léonard, France, 2020
FABIU
Stefan Langthaler, Austria, 2020
QUEER-STREIFEN Jury Award (500 €):
The jury, consisting of Jens Holzhäuser, Heinrich Horwitz and Insa Wiese, awards the main prize 2021 to:
BEFORE THE ERUPTION
Roberto Pérez Toledo, Spain, 2020
Statement of the jury:
BEFORE THE ERUPTION is the story of a circle of friends that has been closely connected from childhood to young adulthood. Despite their different ways of life, they maintain their connection, homogeneity and familiarity through regular, joint vacations. This time they reconnect on a volcanic island and find that the landscape of their friendship, through a seemingly unpredictable eruption, has also begun to change or even be recreated. This is how a member of the small group describes the transformation of Em. From the perspective of the reporter and the other friends, Em is not involved as a young man for the first time, but as a person in transition. A volcanic eruption is not understood as destructive, but as a formative and enriching force of nature, which produces new landscapes, as well as changes and enriches existing ones.
The jury pays tribute to the loving and empowering approach to the topic, which gives the audience the opportunity to perceive a person in transition not as an isolated peculiarity, but as a powerful, self-confident and equal part of the whole. For us, the film is an amazing example of how to deal with queer issues in an empowering, encouraging and connecting way without polarizing and problematizing. Roberto Pérez Toledo manages to make the self-confident and empowered position of Em as tangible as that of his friends. This also succeeds because the reporting friend ultimately gives Em sovereignty over the own history of change. In an almost poetic way, the changing person and their environment form a self-evident unity that celebrates its cohesion and its own changeability. Thus, the film succeeds in balancing the sensitivity and uncertainty of coming-out and the promise of a changing, inclusive, colorful and queer world.
The decision in favour of BEFORE THE ERUPTION is also intended to point out that trans persons and their process of transition are still stigmatized to varying degrees and excluded from society. This also applies to the field of art and culture. Yet art in particular has the ability to broaden or change perspectives and to question and influence social norms. For this purpose, it is important that more people are involved and promoted in the art and cultural sector who are queer, disabled or not in compliance with other current social norms. The fact that these groups are exploited and kept away from crucial positions is still a problem and cannot be accepted.
The jury’s prize of 500€ for the best short film of the 10. QUEER-Streifen Film Festival Regensburg goes to ANTES DE LA ERUPCIÓN by Roberto Peréz Toledo, Spain
Congratulations!
