BRIDES has been awarded the Fritz Gerlich Prize at the Munich Film Festival.
This €10,000 award, endowed by the TELLUX holding company in Munich, is presented in memory of Fritz Gerlich, publisher of the magazine “Der gerade Weg” (“The Straight Path”). Following his conscience as a Catholic, he decried the inhuman ideology of the National Socialists early on and with exemplary courage. Soon after the party seized power, Gerlich became one of the first members of the intellectual and religious resistance to be murdered at the Dachau concentration camp on June 30, 1934. With this award, a filmmaker shall be honored whose work is shown at FILMFEST MÜNCHEN and who, like Fritz Gerlich, has decisively and unflinchingly taken a stand for human dignity and against persecution, ostracism, and humiliation.
The jury of the Fritz Gerlich Prize called “Brides” a “wake-up call”, to look closely at what is happening to young people. The film reminds us that young people must be “gently and carefully accompanied and warned and protected against dangerous manipulations”, the jury continued. The film shows sensitively “how a series of smaller disasters eventually become a great disaster”. The radicalization of young people and their recruitment by extremists is still a danger that is only fueled by exclusion and social injustice, whether intentional or unintentionally. “The film impresses with this topicality,” the jury explained.
Members of the jury were 2025 were Alexander Bothe, Mareike Engelhardt, Yoko Higuchi-Zitzmann, Sandra Krump and Claudia Luzius.
https://www.filmdienst.de/artikel/73943/fritz-gerlich-preis-fur-brides
https://www.filmfest-muenchen.de/en/program/films/film/?id=8024&f=120