Young Actors Award

The Young Actors Award will be presented for the first time in 2024 and honors an outstanding acting performance by an up-and-coming actor. The award thus continues the IFFMH's rich tradition of promoting up-and-coming filmmakers with a forward-looking focus. The award is endowed with 10,000 euros and, with the exception of the Retrospective, is presented across all sections of the festival. From three nominated young actors* who will be shown at the festival, the international jury will honor what it considers to be the most outstanding performance. The prize is sponsored by the Heidelberg-based consultancy cbs.

Skye Alyssa Friedman

Skye Alyssa Friedman is originally from Florida and lives in New York. Her passion for acting began early – she was already on stage as Mary Poppins in kindergarten. She began her professional career at the age of nine and made her Broadway debut at eleven in Annie. She studied at Pace University. In 2025, she took on one of the two leading roles in Lemonade Blessing, for which she has been nominated. Comedy is one of the greatest challenges in cinema – especially for actors. It is therefore absolutely remarkable how, despite all the irony, she manages to maintain a balance between playful lasciviousness and serious emotion and desire, between displayed and actual dominance and vulnerability, without ever betraying her character.

Noah Sayenko

Noah Sayenko was born in Hamburg in 2003. Inspired by Russian actor Maxim Averin, he dreamed of becoming an actor even as a child. In 2021, he was discovered on the street and played the lead role in Lena Hetzel's short film Lebensschulden (Debts of Life) and in Steffen Goldkamp's neo-noir drama Regen fiel auf nichts Neues (Rain Fell on Nothing New), for which he is nominated here. This is his first role in a feature film. All the more impressive is his acting performance, which impressed the programme team with its complex combination of sadness and suppressed anger that seems ready to erupt at any moment, strength and physical menace on the one hand, and vulnerability and sensitivity on the other.

Maksym Slivinskyi

Maksym Slivinskyi is 25 years old and comes from Kolomyia in western Ukraine. He has been boxing since he was 13, is starting an apprenticeship as a carpenter, is getting by – and has big plans: he is going to Moscow to enrol in a business school. With the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, he and his mother flee to France. Maksym used to work in construction, like Vlad, whom he plays in Enzo. This is his first feature film role. This makes his extraordinary screen presence all the more astonishing. With tremendous credibility, he succeeds in combining youthful energy with melancholy, as well as a delicate, self-doubting vulnerability with toughness, and then allowing the latter to manifest itself in anger.

Laura Weissmahr

Laura Weissmahr is a multinational actress from Catalonia who has appeared in seven productions to date. These include ›Fanatico‹ by Roger Gual and ›The Offspring‹ by Ventura Durall. She is awarded for her leading role in ›Salve Maria‹. She plays a mother who is unable to develop positive feelings for her baby. The way in which the actress succeeds in translating the film's diverse tonalities between horror, thriller and comedic elements into her performance is remarkable. Her emotional expression changes from scene to scene, sometimes from one moment to the next, and always strikes the right note.