Competitions: Millennium Award

This year 16 films will compete in the main competition for the Millennium Award and 8,000 euros. A jury, consisting of: Sam Green, Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz and Rick Minnich, will select the winning film. The award is funded by Millennium Bank.

Jury

Sam Green

San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker. His film “The Weather Underground” was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004, broadcast nationally on PBS, and included in the Whitney Biennial. Green’s most recent documentary “Utopia in Four Movements” premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and opened PLANETE+DOC FILM FESTIVAL in 2011. His other films include “Utopia Part 3: the World’s Largest Shopping Mall”, “lot 63, grave c, The Rainbow Man/John 3:16”, “N-Judah 5:30” and “Pie Fight ’69”. Green received his master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied documentary with acclaimed filmmaker Marlon Riggs. He has received grants from the Creative Capital, Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts.


Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz

Born 1954 in Cieplice Śląskie, Poland. Filmmaker and screenwriter. Graduated from the faculty of painting at Wroclaw University (class of 1978) and the Faculty of Radio and TV University of Silesia in Katowice (class of 1982). Author of dozens of documentary and television theater films that received awards both in Poland and abroad, as well as director of the social comedy “A Country of the World” („Kraj świata”). In 2003, she received the Polish-German Journalism Award in the Television category. In 2008, she received her Ph.D. in film studies. She currently teaches at the Polish National Film, Television and Theater School in Lodz.




Rick Minnich

Was born and raised in the Great American West. Following his studies in English literature at Columbia University and film at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), he relocated to Berlin as a graduate fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), where he completed his studies in directing at the Hochschule für Film & Fernsehen “Konrad Wolf.” Minnich's graduation film “Heaven on Earth” screened at IDFA and won the Babelsberg Media Prize for the best graduation film (documentary) in Germany in 2001. His debut film “Homemade Hillbilly Jam” (2005) had its world premiere at HotDocs in 2005, and is distributed in the US by First Run Features. Minnich’s latest film “Forgetting Dad” won the Special Jury Award at IDFA in 2008, the Grand Jury Prize at GZDOC in Guangzhou, China in 2009 and was shortlisted for the 'Lola' – the German Oscar. Rick Minnich’s films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center, Anthology Film Archives, the National Film Theatre, and at film festivals throughout the world, and have been broadcast on television stations throughout Europe, North America, Asia and Africa, including ARTE, ZDF, 3Sat, ORF, WDR, YLE, IKON-TV, SVT, Knowledge Network, etc.