AWARD CEREMONY
CIVIS Media Prize 2025
There is ample reason to be worried – migration, integration and cultural diversity are not achievements that are currently held in high esteem. A tower of crises is causing stress, uncertainty and resentment. And many, all too many, see the CIVIS special zones of interest in the immigration society as sources of additional problems. Creating a mood against things foreign, unfamiliar and supposedly threatening is a political strategy used by populists and nationalists. The enlightenment that CIVIS is committed to requires fearlessness and courage. The good news is that these valuable resources are very present at least in parts of the European media.
This year’s competition for the CIVIS Media Prize provided the proof. In the 38th edition, over 700 productions from all EU countries and Switzerland competed for one of the coveted awards. As in the previous year, the awards were presented in the framework of the major digital trade fair re:publica at the Station am Berliner Gleisdreieck. It was more than just a feel-good event. Which of course it also was – the winners were delighted to receive the awards, the applause-loving audience was audibly delighted as well, and their joy was shared by Mona Ameziane, with her clever and approachable, focused and entertaining moderation, providing just the right mix of cheerfulness and seriousness.
The ceremony was an extravaganza with a contagious effect. The award winners are role models, urgently recommended for imitation or rather inspiration. Because, according to CIVIS Managing Director Ferdos Forudastan, they “research thoroughly, provide factually accurate information, sort it all out intelligently and take a committed stand”. In her welcoming address, Forudastan called it particularly encouraging “in times like these, when forces are gaining ground that not only don’t care about humanity, civility, democracy and the rule of law, but are fighting against all of these things.”
This year, re:publica has adopted the motto “Generation XYZ”. Mona Ameziane explains: “This means that a wide variety of people, including people of different ages, will come together and discuss the question: How do we want to live together? And above all: How can we manage to keep our society open and united, especially in times when our liberal democracy is under such massive pressure? The CIVIS Media Prize traditionally stands for answers to these questions.”
It deals with topics such as labor migration, hate speech, flight, racism, extremism and anti-Semitism. “It’s all incredibly tough,” says presenter Mona. However, the 29 nominated entries on the shortlist of candidates are “a fantastic incentive to think, feel and take a closer look”. The first prize of the evening, chosen by public vote of moviegoers, is the CIVIS CINEMA AWARD. It goes to director Simon Verhoeven and producers Kirstin Winkler, Quirin Berg and Max Wiedemann for their comedy Alter weißer Mann. Sure enough, a comedy is supposed to entertain, says Verhoeven. But the entertaining communication between very different people is also intended to counter pigeonholing, as expressed in the attribution ‘old white man’.
Like most award winners, the winner in the Social Media category was chosen by a jury. The result is announced by actor David Vormweg, known from “John Cranko”, “The Swarm” and the series “Lust”, among others. He is the laudator for the evening – the ‘little fairy’, as he introduces himself, support act for the presenter. Sofika Yogarasa receives the winning stele for Young people with a history of migration supporting their parents – a matter of course or asking too much? on Swiss broadcasting. The title says what it’s all about. For example when young people in migrant families want to help their elders overcome language barriers. Which doesn’t always work, is sometimes funny and sometimes exhausting. “I realized that this is not so well known in mainstream society,” says the award winner. Her film, “multi-faceted and full of warmth” (jury statement), is a successful answer to the problem.
The winner in the VIDEO Information category deals with possibly the most agonizing problem among the CIVIS topics, the plight of refugees trying to reach Europe via perilous routes. According to the jury, ARD Story: Abandoned in the Desert – Europe’s Deadly Refugee Policy by Philipp Grüll and Erik Häußler “uses consistent research to uncover the unscrupulous practices of European migration policy and gives its victims a voice. They are not presented as numbers or cases, but are portrayed as human beings in poignant images and impressive sound bites.”
Grüll and Häußler explain after receiving the award stelae that it took them nearly two years of research. They had to sift through extensive, “extremely crass and incriminating material”. In total, almost 40 journalists across all media were involved in the investigative work in countries such as Libya, Mauritania and Tunisia. The CIVIS award, says Mona, is therefore in this case even more than usual a “collective prize”.
The winner of the competition for the best podcast, once again the result of an audience vote on six contributions curated by the jury, is particularly well received. In Halbe Katoffl, Burak Yilmaz, a teacher and author from Duisburg, tells podcast host Frank Joung about his work with young people from families with a history of migration. “An exemplary piece of immigration history,” the CIVIS selection jury states. Joung has already had more than 180 guests – “Halbe Katoffln” (“half potatoes”). The name of the podcast, in migrant community lingo, also refers to the host himself, whose parents come from Korea. Nobody’s story had been more moving than what Burak Yilmaz had to say about the visit he organised with a group of Muslim youths to Auschwitz, during which the young men and women showed precisely the empathy with the Jewish victims that is often denied them by many German-German citizens. What can we learn from this, Mona wants to know. Joung: “That everyone has their own story that is worth telling.”
Then there are felicitations, congratulations in French. The winning entry in the VIDEO Fiction category comes from France: Souleymane’s Story, by Boris Lojkine and Delphine Agut, is the story of an asylum seeker from Guinea and his journey through the Kafkaesque bureaucratic machinery of the host country. It’s “a story of perseverance and not giving up in the face of adversity, with great lay actors and a breathtaking script”, praises the jury.
But Mona has a surprise up her sleeve: there has been a neck-to-neck race in the fiction competition, with two contenders tied exactly at the end. Bilâl Bahadir’s portrayal of the consequences of the Hanau terrorist attack in February 2020 (Uncivilized – From 9/11 to the Ukraine War. Episode 1: Hanau) also wins the CIVIS AWARD Fiction. Author and director Bahadir explains what the series title is all about. Uncivilized goes back to then German Chancellor Gerd Schröder, who wanted the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 to be understood as an attack by the uncivilized on the civilized world – a classification that is obviously incompatible with attacks such as the racist bloodbath in Hanau. Bahadir: “We are uncivilized and proud of it!” He wanted to show how the terror of Hanau had changed the lives of young people who could also have become victims.
The fact that rampant violent racism is by no means a new phenomenon is demonstrated by the winning entry in the AUDIO long category: Philipp Schnee’s feature Hamburgs Baseballschlägerjahre – Rechte Gewalt in den 1980er-Jahren (Hamburg’s baseball bat years – right-wing violence in the 1980s) describes what was going on in supposedly peaceful Hamburg a decade before the term baseball bat years became established for a violent period in East German history: militant neo-Nazis carried out eight murders, arson attacks, assaults and serious bodily harm. Why did so little of this penetrate the public consciousness? “Most people didn’t understand that this was racism,” says author Schnee. That’s also why he was particularly keen to give space to the counter-movement, the migrant resistance.
What the young ones have to say has a special place at CIVIS, the YOUNG C. AWARD, for applicants up to the age of 38. The winner is Roxana Samadi with her documentary insights into the life of the Iranian community in the diaspora: Freedom in the Heart. Samadi is an actress and the voice of Findus in the world of “Findus and Petterson”, Freedom is her first film as a director. “It expresses the hope of returning home, as well as the helplessness of those who can only follow events in their former homeland or their parents’ homeland from afar,” reads the jury statement. Laudator Vormweg confesses that “this film really blew me away”.
Award winner Samadi is also upset. So much so that she has to put her statement about “my home country Germany and my home country Iran”, on a table and read it off. “The fact that I am standing here in freedom is a pure coincidence. I could just as easily have been on the street in Iran in 2022 and been killed.” She talks about Gaza, the Israeli hostages, violence and oppression. “I hope that we realize that we are one. That the suffering of others is also our suffering … Let’s hurry to be human!”
They are moving words, and the transition to the next award ceremony is not easy for the presenter or the audience. Now it’s time for the AUDIO short category, i.e. the journalistic task of saying a lot in just a few minutes. The jury is convinced that Deutschlandfunk correspondent Katharina Thoms achieved this with a piece for Information in the Morning – Syrian Kurds in Germany between hope and fear. It describes reactions in the Syrian refugee community in Germany to the fall of the dictator Assad. Thoms “does not succumb to the temptation to present supposedly simple solutions”. Instead, she draws “an authentic and differentiated picture of the lives of two exiles”, the jury states.
The traditional finale and highlight of the gala is the CIVIS TOP AWARD for the most outstanding of the eight previous winners. There again, the outcome is a double victory: Souleymane’s Story and Uncivilized are joint winners. And share with all the other award candidates of this year Mona’s concluding praise for “stories that counter the massive attacks on our society and our liberal democracy and help us to take a closer look”.
Header: WDR/ Dirk Borm
Fotos: CIVIS/ Oliver Ziebe
Mona Ameziane und Katharina Thoms: WDR/ Thomas Kierok