The Golden Key will award an outstanding documentary work of a young director. The City of Kassel supports the prize for the 24rd time. The Golden Key is awarded in two categories: for the best documentary short film, up to 66 minutes, and the best documentary feature film, of more than 66 minutes. Each prize is endowed with €2,500.
Nominated are works whose directors were not older than 35 years by the time the work was completed. In justified cases the selection committees of the festival decide about exceptions regarding this regulation. The selection committees have nominated 21 works from the festival program for the Golden Key. Including films from Afghanistan, Argentina, Canada, China, Ecuador, France, Ger many, India, Kurdistan, Luxembourg, Myanmar, Netherlands, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, South Korea, Spain, Ukraine and the United States.
Since 2017 the Golden Key is listed as an officially accepted competition of the German National Film Board (FFA). Films produced in Germany with a running time up to 30 minutes are able to collect 5 points for reference film funding with a nomination.
Jury 2025
Martin Bach has been head of the Cultural Office of the City of Kassel since August 2025. From 2015 to 2025, he was director at Goethe Institutes in Brazil, Norway, and the Netherlands. Prior to that, he initiated and implemented European cultural and educational projects as project manager at the Allianz Cultural Foundation. He studied political science in Berlin and Kyoto.
Anna Feistel is a programmer, curator, and art educator from Hamburg who studied literature, art, and media studies in Konstanz and Rome. She discovered short films through her work at a communal cinema. She has worked for Art Basel and the MKG Hamburg, among others. Since 2019, she has been part of the selection committee and program coordination team at the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg.
Amrei Keul is co-director of the International Short Film Week Regensburg. She studied German and Romance languages and initially worked in theater and the visual arts. Since 2018, she has worked for various film festivals (including the Alcine Film Fest in Spain, the Fünf Seen Film Festival in Starnberg, and as a guest curator for Interfilm Berlin). Since 2024, she has also been a member of the board of the AG Kurzfilm (Short Film Association).
Daniel Kothenschulte is a film and art critic, author and curator. He is a film critic for the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper and regularly writes artist portraits and exhibition reviews for Monopol magazine. He has held lectures on film and art at the Städelschule, Frankfurt/Main and the Fachhochschule für Design, Dortmund. He has published books on Walt Disney, Robert Redford, Fritz Lang's “Metropolis”, “Hollywood in the 30s” and Mike Kelly, among others. As a curator, he founded the Cologne avant-garde film festival Videonale Scope.
Anna Witt (she/her) is working with performance, installations and video.
Her immersive installations serve as a stage for performative interventions and are at the same time part of a dynamic process.
She creates situations that reflect on social structures and the political of our everyday in the context of care, labor, class and gender. The body in relation to individual and collective experiences plays a central role in her works.
Her work had been shown at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and Kunsthalle Vienna, among others. Witt holds a Master of Fine Arts in Performativ Sculpture and is currently a fellow at HBK Braunschweig in the Dorothea-Erxleben program. For her short film “Bond,” which was created in collaboration with the Jugendforum Gröpelingen, she received an honorable mention in the Golden Key category at the 40th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival.
Award Winners
2024 Feature Film: Victoria Verseau: Trans Memoria
2024 Short Film: José Luis Jiménez Gómez: El Reinando de Antoine
2024 Honorable Mention Feature Film: Farah Kassem: Nahnou Fil Dakhil
2023 Feature Film: Asmae El Moudir: The Mother of All Lies
2023 Short Film: Franzis Kabisch: getty abortions
2023 Honorable Mention Short Film: Anna Witt, Jugendforum Gröpelingen: Bond
2022 Feature Film: Marusya Syroechkovskaya: How to Save a Dead Friend
2022 Short Film: Evgenia Arbugaeva, Maxim Arbugaev: Haulout
2022 Honorable Mention Feature Film: HA LE Diem: Children of the Mist
2021 Feature Film: Stefan Pavlovic: Looking for Horses
2021 Short Film: Guang Liu: 当海里长出森林 (When the Sea Sends Forth a Forest)
2020 Feature Film: Radu Ciorniciuc: Acasa – My Home
2020 Shortfilm: Francesca Bertin: L`Artificio
2019 Feature Film: Jialing Zhang und Nanfu Wang: One Child Nation
2019 Shortfilm: Markus Fiedler, Nanna Katrine Hansen, Thomas Elsted and Stanley Edwards: Cast Away Souls
2018 Feature Film: Jasmin Preiß: Sweet Meadow
2018 Shortfilm: Agnes Lisa Wegner: No Fucking Ice Cream
2017 Ziad Kalthoum: Taste of Cement
2016 Ognjen Glavonic: Dubina Dva
2015 Mea de Jong: If Mama Ain't Happy, Nobody's Happy
2014 Leslie Tai: The Private Life of Fenfen
2013 Gabriel Serra: La parka
2012 Antoine Bourges: East Hastings Pharmacy
2011 Carmen Losmann: Work Hard - Play Hard
2010 Viera Cákanyová: Alda
2009 Thomas A. Østbye: Human
2008 Mario Hirasaka: Die Ryozanpaku
2007 Jess Feast: Cowboys & Communists
2006 Sarah Vanagt: Begin Began Begun
2005 Susanne Jaeger: Vater und Feind
2004 Alexandra Gulea: Die Daumendreher (GOD PLAYS SAX; THE DEVIL VIOLIN)
2003 Sandra Jakisch: 08/15 – Leben am Rand von Köln
2002 Klaus Stern: Andreas Baader- Der Staatsfeind