Dr. h.c. Friedrich Baur loved music, art and sports. Together with his wife Kathi Baur, he was tirelessly committed to social and charitable work. Since 2018, the FRIEDRICH BAUR GOLD AWARD (formerly HOFER GOLDPREIS) has been awarded by the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in memoriam Heinz Badewitz as part of the Hof International Film Festival. With a certified gold bar worth around 35,000 euros, this is the most highly endowed prize for young directors in Germany.
“For me, directing is conducting without a real score. Because notes are the music, but a script is initially just a map. And the map is not the landscape, as we know. The map is not the landscape... For me, the visualization of this map script describes directing. But visualization is only the generic term for what you end up with. Something visible, images. A movie.However, directing is always narrative through and through: How do I tell the story I want to tell? Who am I doing it with and why? What means do I have and how do I use them?
Even the title sequence of the film, which today receives the Friedrich Baur Gold Prize for directing, shows the feeling and knowledge for the aforementioned. The direction, screenplay, acting, camera, editing and sound design begin an overture that in 9 minutes brings me closer to a person, a world and a feeling for the people in it. Without a single word from the main character .At minute twelve, we hear David's first words. There are exactly five: “This is hell” he says and then leaves the interview room of a rehab clinic. In the 55 minutes that follow, director and screenwriter Lucas Dülligen and his formidable partner and cinematographer Mattis Schulte unravel the downward social spiral of junkie David with merciless precision in his film SCATTERED SUNSHINE. The actor Lasse Claßen plays this David with the barest of means and yet he shies away from nothing.
The means of this film and the precision of their use, the form of cinematic narrative, the attitude of not chewing the viewer over, but showing him the world of David in the precision of the smallest things, are a great promise for the future of director Lucas Dülligen. The Friedrich Baur Gold Prize, in the form of a gold bar worth 35,000 euros, “pours” this promise into a great responsibility right from the start. This responsibility, Lucas, is the price you have to pay for this prize. After seeing SCATTERED SUNSHINE, I am quite sure that you will face up to this responsibility with your next film. Congratulations to the winner of the Friedrich Baur Gold Award 2024, Lucas Dülligen.”