Ecumenical Award

This award is given to a work in the ON THE RISE competition that demonstrates high artistic quality and expresses a human point of view that is in line with the Scriptures or encourages an examination of the biblical tradition and sensitises the audience to spiritual, social or ethical values.

This award is presented by the Ecumenical Jury, which consists of five members of the inter-church film networks INTERFILM and SIGNIS. Mannheim is one of the first film festivals ever to establish a church jury: The church jury has been present at the film festival in Mannheim (and later Mannheim-Heidelberg) since 1963, initially under the name INTERFILM, and since 1995 together with the Catholic partner organisation SIGNIS as the Ecumenical Jury.

Gaëlle Courtens, Lugano (Switzerland) / Rome (Italy)

Gaëlle Courtens (*1967), journalist, editor in chief of the Swiss monthly Voce evangelica, is the coordinator for the Swiss Italian Protestant Media (Print, Online, Radio and TV), that cooperates with the Swiss Public Broadcaster RSI. Her main topics are: ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, religious freedom, secularity, religion and politics, migrations, human rights. For many years she served as Press Officer of the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy. She has been a member of the WACC Steering Committee Europe. She holds a Master degree in Italian Language and Literature, Sociology, Political Science at the University of Zurich (CH), and a specialization in International Law at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. She has been a member of the PRIX FAREL Jury in Neuchâtel, so as of the INTERFILM Jury in Venice (2014), and of the Ecumenical Juries in Locarno (2015), Cannes (2017) and Cottbus (2019).

Tom Alesch, Dippach (Luxembourg)

Tom Alesch (*1973) started his career as a freelance contributor to radio and television before becoming a documentary filmmaker. Since 1999 he has been working at the media department of Luxembourg’s Ministry of Education, Children and Youth. His freelance work explores artists and other thought-provoking people, society and industry in earlier times, as well as a contemporary society in socioecological transition. He is a member of the administration board of a Christian adult education centre with a focus on personality development and media literacy. He has been a member of Ecumenical juries at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, at DOK Leipzig and at the Max Ophuels Film Festival.

Jörg Breu, Regensburg (Germany)

Jörg Breu (*1965) is a Protestant theologian with a focus on interreligious dialogue, a social manager and Member of INTERFILM. He worked as a pastor in Wuerzburg and as a dean in the Nuremberg region. He is now dean in Regensburg, the largest deanery in Bavaria. His first encounter with film was his participation in the documentary-film “Living Eyewitnesses-Landsberg” about the subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp in 1983. He has long been concerned with aesthetic theory and religious elements in film and for a time ran an art house cinema with a club of volunteers.