Master of Cinema Award

Laureates

Great cinema is art -

With the Master of Cinema Award, the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg honors directors who as authors have promoted the art of cinema both uncompromisingly and with artistic innovation, cinema artists who have created an author cinema with its own signature. This award is given to auteurs who create works of film art opposed to films which should be understood without a problem by everybody. Films that stand out from mainstream cinema like marvels of poetic "enchantment of reality" (Dr. Michael Kötz), auteur films that have the right to allow as much character as possible, free from all prototypes.

Since 1998, the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg has welcomed these outstanding creators of masterfully crafted cinematography:

:: Laureate 2009

2009

Master of Cinema Award
Atom Egoyan

Laudation
We have somebody as a guest this evening who is rated not only by me but by very many cineasts worldwide as being in the league of the best in his profession, of the best living directors, because his works, as varied as they may be, always display a great depth, both in the subject matter and in the artistic approach, that is, the form. And yet it seems as if this one kind of secret knowledge and the names of other directors of the 'now time', whom I am not going to mention to you here, because they do not remotely reach the level he is at, yet are known to considerably more people (...).
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