Shoot is a collaboration with the Equal Opportunities Office at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. It offers emerging talents a platform and financial support. Endowed with 1,000 euros, the prize is being awarded for the seventh time. In 2026, it will go to Lenia Friedrich for her AnimaDok So ist das Leben und nicht anders (That’s Life and Nothing Else).

Lenia Friedrich, who graduated with honours in media art from the KHM in 2024, dedicates her work to animated documentary film in an impressive way. The 13-minute short film So ist das Leben und nicht anders (That’s Life and Nothing Else) uses the graphic power of drawing to artfully connect different stories – those of its protagonist and her own. She does this with a gentleness and creativity that is only possible in the free medium of animated drawing.

Jury statement: “In this work in particular, Lenia Friedrich finds a formally independent visual language that does not impose itself, but persistently opens up her theme: memories, breaks and what is all too often overlooked or silenced in women’s everyday lives are sensitively and poetically linked with clarity. With great ethical mindfulness, the film leads us into a snail shell of memory, where time does not run linearly, but appears tentative, fragile and full of meaning.”

The jury consists of Conny Beißler (DoP, Cologne), Tasja Langenbach (freelance curator, artistic director of Videonale Bonn) and Nicole Rebmann (freelance curator, IFFF Dortmund+Cologne). It will present the award on 26 April at the award ceremony in the Orangerie Theater Cologne.

So ist das Leben und nicht anders is part of The Film All-Nighter:
24 APR 20:30 Orangerie Theater Cologne, Guest: Lenia Friedrich

The festival programme and tickets for the 43rd IFFF Dortmund+Köln will be available here on the website and at Rausgegangen.de from the end of March.