VIENNA FILM AWARD
The Vienna Film Award, an award established by the City of Vienna and presented as part of the Viennale, honours a recent Austrian feature film that was released in the previous year. The prize consists of a cash award provided by the City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs, as well as financial support from Hotel The Harmonie Vienna. In addition to the award for Best Austrian Film, the Vienna Film Award also includes the Jury Special Award.
Jury: Astrid Peterle (Chief Curator of MuseumsQuartier Wien), Hilde Dalik (film, television and theatre actress), Daniel Ebner (curator and long-standing festival director of Vienna Shorts)
Best Austrian Film
EVERYTIME
Sandra Wollner
Austria, Germany 2026
Jury Statement: The Vienna Film Award for Best Austrian Film goes to an extraordinary film that we simply could not stop talking about. A film in which tragic and magical realism meet, both weightless and oppressive at once, shaped by outstanding performances and remarkable wide perspectives and points of view that (here, too) tell stories of everyday life: of the supposedly ordinary, which simply goes on existing in the midst of the unimaginable. There is no single way to grieve – this is the simple yet profound, and unfortunately rarely voiced, insight of this film. The director succeeds in challenging preconceived notions of what grief and loss should look like, both on and beyond the screen. There is no voyeurism or melodrama here, but rather quiet moments, unspoken feelings, unrealised visions of the future – and protagonists we feel close to as they move through temporal and spatial loops of “this is how it is” and “it will never be the same again”. And then, unexpectedly, magic happens. The film’s title says it all: this one reality is always there, alongside the second one that settles next to it. We are delighted to present the 2026 Vienna Film Award for Best Austrian Film to EVERYTIME by Sandra Wollner. Congratulations!
Special Jury Award
MILITANTROPOS
Alina Gorlova, Yelizaveta Smith, Simon Mozgovyi
Austria, France, Ukraine 2025
Jury Statement: The Special Jury Award goes to a film that simply would not let us go, capturing the brutality of the present in a unique way while breaking with conventions and taking the time to focus on its protagonists and their surroundings; a film for which an empathetic view of everyday events matters more than the media’s appetite for sensationalism. It resists the dangerous desensitising effect of daily news coverage and instead focuses on the lived realities of people for whom war is not news, but everyday life, and for whom a state of emergency has become the norm. Filmed over a period of more than two and a half years and captured in striking images, we witness the cruel simultaneity of sadness and hope, violence and beauty – and how this coexistence is absorbed into the everyday. It is a film made in the spirit of, and with trust in, the collective, and one that would not have been possible without support and production from Austria. And it reminds us, almost in passing: let us take care of our democracy – and not abandon one another. The 2026 Special Jury Award goes to MILITANTROPOS by Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova and Simon Mozgovyi, co-produced by Ralph Wieser. Congratulations!
VIENNALE AWARD OF THE STANDARD READER'S JURY
DER STANDARD is once again organising the DER STANDARD Readers Jury Award this year. The jury members select a film from the festival programme that does not yet have an Austrian distributor. If the award-winning film subsequently secures distribution, DER STANDARD supports its theatrical release by providing free advertising space in the newspaper.
Jury: Noah Löffler, Elif Naz Kayran, Hildegard Schmoller
ÜBERGANG
Peter Badel, Chris Wright
Germany 2026
Jury Statement: Schönhauser Allee is at the centre of the documentary film by Thomas Heise, Peter Badel and Chris Wright, which traces Berlin’s profound transformation from late GDR socialism through the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present day. Through the use of, among other things, previously unpublished documents and letters, the film succeeds in creating a clear and eye-opening portrait of these transitions. By presenting the film with the DER STANDARD Audience Award, we want to honour not only its poetic cinematic approach, but above all Thomas Heise’s sensitivity, which we believe is important today, perhaps more than ever.
Special Mention:
HOLY WOOD DUST
Victor Kossakovsky
Italy, Germany, Spain 2026
FIPRESCI AWARD (INTERNATIONAL FILM CRITICS AWARD)
FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics, was founded in 1930. The organisation is committed to upholding journalistic ethics and representing the professional interests of its members. FIPRESCI members come from all over the world and form small juries at numerous film festivals to present the International Federation of Film Critics Prize. In most cases, as at the Viennale, they select a film from among the first and second features by emerging filmmakers.
Jury: Marietta Steinhart (Austria), Giulio Zoppello (Italy), Călin Boto (Romania)
Ben’Imana
Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo
Rwanda, Gabon, France, Norway, Côte d’Ivoire 2026
Jury Statement: Forgiveness is a big word. In BEN’IMANA, it is initially a public gesture – and a deeply personal imposition. Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo tells the story of Rwanda in 2012, of a society searching for paths towards justice and reconciliation in the aftermath of the genocide against the Tutsi. This is more than a remarkable debut. Here, a young film culture, still in the process of establishing itself, finds a voice of its own. With great sensitivity, Dusabejambo weaves together three generations of women, collective memory and family conflicts, without reducing her characters to positions or victim narratives. She tells the story from within Rwandan society, with a remarkable sense for nuance, physical presence and the significance of what remains unspoken. Her direction places its trust in the power of encounters, faces and subtle shifts. In short: BEN’IMANA trusts in the contradictions of life – and possesses the rare ability not merely to assert humanity, but to make it visible.
ERSTE BANK FILM AWARD
For the 16th time, Erste Bank is presenting the Erste Bank Film Award as part of the Viennale. The award recognises Austrian feature-length and short films included in the festival programme. With this award, Erste Bank honours outstanding artistic achievements and underscores its long-term commitment to sustainably supporting Austrian filmmaking in an international context. The recipient is selected by an independent jury.
Jury: Silvia Bohrn, Christine Dollhofer, Sebastian Höglinger
FOREVER…FOREVER
Johann Lurf
Austria, France 2026
Jury Statement: Images that are time itself. A view of a reservoir in the Waldviertel region over the years. More precisely, over 22 months, continuously captured on the specially developed VistaRama65mm analogue film format, onto which the changing light moods of the seasons and an entire miniature world are inscribed. As the exposure time steadily increases, the play of images on the screen evolves into a true cosmology of cinema, in which the laws of physics, time and space seem to be suspended.
The award-winning film captivates on several levels: on the one hand, as a sensual magic of perception unfolding on the screen; on the other, as a technical experiment that, through the precisely timed interplay of rhythm, image and sound, builds towards a triumphant cinematic finale. When, in the film’s final 17 seconds, an entire annual cycle thunders across the screen, cinema is fully itself. 24 hours of life in every analogue frame. Goosebumps.
This year, the Erste Bank Film Award goes to an experimental film unlike anything that has come before it. And to a filmmaker who consistently conceives of the cinematic image and the apparatus of cinema in relation to one another. Ultimately, this award also honours a film genre that receives little visibility in mainstream cinema – yet all the more powerfully upends our view of the world and brings it into sharper focus.