Jury statement for the Caligari Film Prize 2025 to FWENDS
We are experiencing the increase and complexity of global crises. They are having a negative impact on our interpersonal relationships and on how we make art. We are also seeing more and more fronts hardening, people feeling lonely and rifts opening up even in friendships. Listening to others and understanding what drives them can no longer be taken for granted.
We have therefore chosen a film that sets an example of how important it is to listen to each other and have the courage to open up and admit your own weaknesses. A film that sparkles with humor and lightness. The debut feature film focuses on cheerful moments without escapism, on solidarity without drawing a negative contrast, and on the power of trust without fear of any risk. In a playful and original way, the film manages to turn around restrictive production conditions by relying on collective working methods. In this context, it wanders between serious conversations and silly self-forgetfulness, between precise acting and documentary open-endedness.
In this way, the film encourages us to go on a search: for the special in the simple, for the strengths in our weaknesses, for freedoms in the controlled. The film is a vivid document of a tangibly pleasurable creative process, a cosmopolitan testimony to the fears and motivations of young women.
Freedom of movement and freedom of opinion that cannot be taken for granted by many people are the film’s starting point to address issues which often take a back seat to acute political conflicts, which however define both our human interaction and the relationship between the two main characters. Their rambles through the city of Melbourne structure the film. They are dynamic, restless and free-flowing, yet retain their focus, open up spaces and are edited in a remarkably stringent way. At a breathtaking pace, the improvised conversations draw us into a maelstrom of single-mindedness and disorientation, climate change and mental health, nihilism and clown costumes. And all within the space of an overnight visit.
We feel very honored for having experienced such a rousing, rare, funny and powerful friendship between women through this film, on the screen and in the film team. The Caligari Film Prize 2025 goes thus to the film FWENDS.
