The Marl Grimme Institute has announced the nominations for the 60th Grimme Prize. 64 productions and individual performances were selected from more than 750 submissions in four categories. Twelve productions from private television, pay TV and streaming providers are among the nominees this year – that’s an unusually large number.
Disney+ is there with three productions in the first year after the launch of its local offering developed in Germany. The series “Deutsches Haus” tells the story of a young interpreter at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial in 1963. “Sam – Ein Sachse” shows the story of Samuel Meffire, who is considered the first Afro-German police officer in East Germany. The ensemble from the series “The Three!!!” was awarded a special prize in the Children & Youth category. nominated.
Other nominated productions also show how important it is to engage with history. These include “I am! Margot Friedländer” (ZDF) about the life story of the 101-year-old Holocaust survivor in the fiction category, as well as “Stalingrad – Voices from Ruins” (rbb/ARTE/NDR) and “Three Women – a War” (rbb/WDR/ARTE) in the Information & Culture category. “Einzelarbeiter” (ZDF), a production dedicated to right-wing terrorist attacks in Germany, was highlighted, and “Capital B – Who Owns Berlin?” (rbb/WDR/ARTE) examines the history of Berlin since the fall of the Wall in 1989.
“Songs of Guest Workers – Love, D-Mark and Death” (WDR/rbb/ARTE), nominated in the Information & Culture category, tells the story of Turkish guest workers in Germany based on their musical culture, which is reflected in its special form has only developed in Germany and highlights topics such as home and identity. The productions “Hypeculture: Street Slang – How Rap Changes Germany” (funk), nominated in the youth category, and “Prison Tapes” (RTL+), nominated in the entertainment category, also deal with the topic of music.
A cooperation with Kenya could win a special prize
Candidates for the Special Journalistic Achievement award are the editorial team of the magazine “Monitor” for their outstanding research on the subject of migration, the ARD correspondent Katharina Willinger (ARD Studio Istanbul/BR) for her reporting from Turkey and Iran and the research team behind the Documentation “China. Power. Food” for the extensive reporting on the geopolitical instrumentalization of the World Food Organization by China (SWR/BR/MDR/rbb).
The company Good Karma Fiction, in association with ZDF/ARTE, has been nominated for a special prize in the fiction category for supporting and advising a Kenyan production team on the first Kenyan Netflix series “Country Queen”. The result is a series that deals with home and family in a special way.
The fact that three of the four committees did not exhaust their nomination quota shows that the pre-selection committees do not rate the quality standard of the past year very high overall. “In 60 years, the industry has experienced profound change, overcome financial and structural hurdles and developed substantially despite all the prophets of doom,” explained Grimme director Frauke Gerlach. “The Grimme Prize is and remains a guide for quality productions on German television.”