Student Academy Award: Two Oscars for Munich film students – Munich

A student Oscar for the Munich film school is cause for celebration, no question. Two student Oscars are even better. This little miracle happened this year: At the 49th Student Academy Awards, probably the world’s most important young talent award in the film industry, Nils Keller and Welf Reinhart and their teams stepped into the limelight at the David Geffen Theater in Los Angeles as winners. “A double, great success for the HFF Munich”, commented HFF President Bettina Reitz. “There’s never been two Oscars in one year,” enthused Julia von Heinz and Marcus H. Rosenmüller from the feature film directing department.

It has been clear since the end of September that Keller and Reinhart are among the winners in the “Narrative” category. And for every winner there is an Oscar. Since Thursday evening American time, the final details have also been clarified: Nils Keller (“Almost Home”) won gold and Welf Reinhart (“Eigenheim”) won silver, which is the best possible result from the point of view of the HFF. In the end, the two Munich ranked ahead of Freddy Macdonald (“Shedding Angels”) from the American Film Institute, who was honored with the bronze Oscar. “In the end, of course, it plays a certain role which of the prizes we win. At the same time, winning, no matter what color, is a huge honor and a door opener for the international and national industry,” said Keller, 31, before the decision was made. His colleague, who is four years his junior, was also modest: “I also accept the bronze Oscar with great gratitude.” Now he can look forward to silver.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s gold, silver or bronze – a so-called student Oscar is an early endorsement for young filmmakers. This year, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences received a good 1,800 entries from more than 600 colleges and universities around the world, sorted into the categories of experimental film, animation, documentary and feature film. For the first time, the 2022 awards were not presented separately for US and international productions. The fact that two people from Munich are now among the top three in the newly united supreme discipline of feature film can be seen as a huge success for the HFF.

“Of course I was over the moon and called my parents right away,” Keller recalls when he found out about the invitation to LA in mid-September. Like Reinhart, he found out about the winner’s message in a zoom call disguised as an interview with the nominees. Quite surprisingly, the well-known US director Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Woman Kin”) was added, says Keller. “Then she told me that I won.”

An Oscar for an exercise film? That’s fine

So who are the Munich winners, about whom their professors Heinz and Rosenmüller said they tackled major social issues and negotiated them on a highly emotional level on a human level? And with which films (both of which were made in cooperation with BR and are HFF team works) did you win?

Nils Keller was born in Munich in 1991. He says: “I feel very connected to the city.” With his winning film “Almost Home” he completed his directing studies at the HFF. He has already shot commercials and TV films, about three episodes of “Soko Köln” for ZDF in the summer. “Almost Home” is different. The 30-minute science fiction miniature is about an extraordinary mother-son conflict: A 17-year-old (Jeremias Meyer) accompanies his mother, a space researcher (Susanne Wolff), on a trip to Mars to receive therapy in weightlessness against his autoimmune disease. Shortly before the planned return, “the worst pandemic that has ever existed” breaks out on Earth. The boy belongs to the risk group, but his desire to finally leave isolation is great. Keller and his team (Camera: Georg Nikolaus, VFX: Lukas Väth) have succeeded in creating an intensive chamber play in space that looks damn good and is very touching; the pandemic topic is not overused.

In his acceptance speech, the director said: “We were short on money, an ongoing pandemic, and we wanted – no, we had to – build a full-size walk-in spaceship. We needed a lot of visual effects. So many things could have gone wrong.”

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Welf Reinhart was born in Würzburg and first studied visual communication in Kassel before moving to Munich. The fact that he hasn’t finished learning at the HFF and his winning film “Eigenheim” is a so-called exercise film speaks for his talent. In his 23-minute drama, which has already won a number of awards and has been shown at several international festivals, Reinhart deals with a socially relevant topic, namely that of forced eviction as a result of a termination for personal use. The deeply human drama about an elderly couple who brace themselves against the inevitable, astounds with tenderness and warmth. The way the two protagonists deal with each other during the difficult times is heartbreaking (played by Ingrid Farin and Reinhart Firchow, screenplay: Tünde Sautier).

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What’s next after the glamorous appearance? After the Oscars is before the Oscars? Yes and no. Reinhart now wants to concentrate entirely on his graduation film, which is to be shot in the winter. “I want to start working as soon as possible,” he says, “I really want to work as a director.” TV, streamer – he can imagine everything.

Keller is already one step further, the HFF studies are behind him. “The award is a real dream for me,” he says, “on which I and we as a team want to build in order to gain a foothold in the international industry.” The Oscar should act as a door opener, and the next projects are already being developed: “Feature films and series”. The Munich native, who describes Denis Villeneuve (“Dune”) as the greatest role model, has a clear vision: “As a film director, I want to tell narratively and visually sophisticated stories for a wide audience. My focus is on intense, dramatic stories with diverse, profound and ambivalent figures. I’m also fascinated by world building, i.e. creating a narrative framework that takes you a bit out of everyday life and takes you into a more or less different world.” That’s exactly what he has already achieved with “Almost Home”.

And there are other Oscar hopes too. Because all films awarded a student Oscar are entitled to compete for the “big” Oscars in the short film categories. Munich-based Florian Gallenberger, among others, succeeded in doing this: for “Quiero ser” there was first the student Oscar in 2000 and then the short film Oscar. For Katja von Garnier (1994) and Alex Schaad (2016), too, the student Oscars were engines for their careers.