Grimme Award Nomination for DER RUSSE IST EINER, DER BIRKEN LIEBT

DER RUSSE IST EINER, DER BIRKEN LIEBT has been nominated for the prestigious Grimme Award in the Fiction category. The winners will be announced on March 6.

Nominated for the 61st Grimme Award, the film is directed by Pola Beck and based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Olga Grjasnowa. It tells the story of a young woman’s journey of self-discovery and her search for a sense of belonging.

Mascha (Aylin Tezel) is wild, outspoken, uncompromising, and quick-witted, yet deep down, she feels lost. A cosmopolitan aspiring interpreter who speaks five languages fluently, Mascha never speaks about her own story—the refugee within her. Her circle of friends is multicultural, celebrating life while responding to everyday racism with sharp irony. Mascha loves passionately and recklessly—her languages, her friends, and above all, Elias (Slavko Popadić).

Just as she moves in with Elias, he suffers what initially seems like a minor sports injury but soon leaves him in need of constant care. Mascha’s life starts to unravel, and Elias’s unexpected death throws her into a deep crisis. In an attempt to escape, she boards a plane to Israel with nothing but her passport. There, she does what she knows best—she plunges headfirst into a new life, finds new love, and ultimately realizes that you can’t run away from yourself forever.

DER RUSSE IST EINER, DER BIRKEN LIEBT is produced by augenschein Filmproduktion in co-production with ZDF / Das kleine Fernsehspiel and in collaboration with ARTE. The film was supported by the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF), and MEDIA – Creative Europe.

The film had its world premiere in 2022 at the Munich Film Festival in the New German Cinema.

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