Award
The Werner Herzog Film Award 2023 goes to
Rezo Gigineishvili for his film PATIENT #1
The Werner Herzog Film Award, an annual award endowed with a sum of Euro 5,000, can go to a feature film, a documentary, a filmmaker, an actor, or anyone working in the art of cinema. It will be given to special achievements in innovation, courage, and vision. The award is open to citizens of all countries. There is no application procedure, and no competition.
The Werner Herzog Foundation Award 2023 goes to
Rezo Gigineishvili for his film PATIENT #1
from left: Archil Gelovani (Producer), Rezo Gigineishvili (Director), Werner Herzog, Sergey Yahontov (Producer)
The end of the Soviet empire. The General Secretary lies in the government clinic. He is old and frail, but still has a tight grip on power. "The power is only taken, it is never given away," he repeats. And it is convenient for both the elites and the secret services -- while the "body" is alive, various groups are scoring their political points. The General Secretary is "sentenced to life". A young nurse Sasha looks after him. Small, fragile and invisible, she bears a heavy burden of responsibility for the life of the country's top official. Meanwhile, the old man is waging a war in Afghanistan, has a nuclear button and can take the entire world to the grave with him.
Werner Herzog on the bestowal of the award:
Like his previous film HOSTAGES from 2017 his new film PATIENT #1 deals with the collapse of an entire political system but without being didactic at all. HOSTAGES is about a skyjacking at the end of the Sovjet era in Georgia, as a small group of young people tries to get away of all the repression and the lies of the Late Period of the Soviet Union.
PATIENT #1 is more radical, staged like a Farce. The historical events are well documented for: within a little over three years three head of states of the Soviet Union die, Breschnew, Andropow and Tschernenko. Tschernenko has been named General Secretary by the Politburo as he already was fatally ill. His last days in the hospital are told from the perspective of a young nurse, especially picked to tend to the General Secretary.
We as spectators see in detail as a polling site in his infirmary is being installed just to fake the "normal" attendance of the General Secretary at an election, a theatre decor so to speak, for a dying man, wo must be exercised daily to be able to take a few steps without help for the cameras of the state-run television from his bed to the ballot box to cast his vote. Helping hands of the secret service support the General Secretary to stand upright. One day, as the patient feels better he immediately expresses his wish to got to the Kremlin to attend to his work as General Secretary and to take the lead of the state affairs again, the secret service unceremoniously puts him into an ambulance and drives around the hospital compound until the patient loses consciousness again.
Rezo Gigineishvilis film shows, in details only, the last crisis of the looming collapse of an entire empire. His approach is courageous, radical. One wants to laugh, but one cannot, and one wants to cry, but that also is not possible.
The award ceremony is going to take place on
Friday, October 6, 2023 at 7 pm
at the Munich Cinematheque (Filmmuseum München), St.-Jakobs-Platz 1
The ceremony is followed by the screening of the award winning film and a live discussion between the Rezo Gigineishvili and Werner Herzog.
Limited ticket sales.