Douglas Sirk Award
by Birgit Schrumpf

Since 1995 the Douglas Sirk Award has been given as part of Filmfest Hamburg to personalities who have made a special contribution to film culture and the film industry. This year’s recipient was the German actress Nina Hoss. She is the fifth woman after Jodie Foster, Isabelle Huppert, Tilda Swinton and Catherine Deneuve.

Festival director Albert Wiederspiel said,“We are very happy to award one of the most important German actresses. Nina Hoss is just as present on the screen as she is on stage. She is passionately committed to cinema, pushing the boundaries and also demonstrating her stance beyond the filmset. Nina Hoss is an outstanding personality who makes an important contribution to film culture and is also one of the bet-known German actresses of her generation abroad“.

Nina Hoss was born in Stuttgart in 1975 and started her studies at Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch Berlin. In 1996 she was cast by Bernd Eichinger in DAS MÄDCHEN ROSEMARIE (The Girl Rosemarie). It was an immediate success. At the Berlinale in 2007 she received the Silver Bear for Best Actress for her role in YELLA by Christian Petzold. With him she made six films but was also cast abroad alongside Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe and Robin Wright in A MOST WANTED MAN (2014) by Anton Corbijn. In the US series HOMELAND she took the role of Astrid.

At Filmfest Hamburg Nina Hoss could be seen in two films, DAS VORSPIEL and PELIKANBLUT. Pelican Blood received this year’s Hamburger Producers Award for German Production (Producer: Verena Gräfe-Höft). For her new film SHADOWLAND she is now in front of the camera on location in Prague.

In addition to numerous rewards Nina Hoss is represented with a “Star“ on the Berlin Boulevard. She looks back at 15 years as a theatre actress and is a member of the Schaubühne ensemble in Berlin where she still has regular guest appearances. 2011 she was part of the international jury at the Berlinale and in 2016 she belonged to the jury of the Venice Film Festival. This year Nina Hoss received an invitation to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, which is responsible for the Oscar awards. France has honoured her as Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, acknowledging  that she is not “only“ a German actress but a European citoyenne taking a stance toward world affairs.

Next to her successful career Nina Hoss is supporting the campaign “Your Voice Against Poverty“ and is committed to fighting female genital mutilation as an ambassador for Terre-des-Femmes. She is involved in the protection of the Brasilian rain forest and for better living conditions of the indigenous population in the region.