Former fellows Sigrun Köhler and Wiltrud Baier (Böller und Brot) receive the Baden-Württemberg Honorary Film Award 2023

Akademie Schloss Solitude congratulates the two former fellows Sigrun Köhler and Wiltrud Baier (Böller und Brot) on receiving the Baden-Württembergischer Ehrenfilmpreis (Honorary Award) 2023.

The two authors and documentary filmmakers have been realizing free, uncompromising and artistic film works such as Narren, Alarm am Hauptbahnhof or Wer hat Angst vor Sibylle Berg with their production company Böller und Brot since 2000.

This year’s unendowed Baden-Württemberg Honorary Film Award will be presented at the 29th Baden-Württemberg Film Show as part of the award ceremony on Sunday, December 10, 2023, in the Dürnitz Kulturlounge in the Altes Schloss in Stuttgart. The award honors people who help shape Baden-Württemberg as a media and film location, support it sustainably through their work and make an important contribution to the perception of the location beyond the state’s borders.

Sigrun Köhler from Schwäbisch Hall and Wiltrud Baier, born in Erlangen, are two creative minds
of Baden-Württemberg’s film industry, who with their courageous and humorous documentaries
enrich the media location with their courageous and humorous documentaries. They received numerous prizes and and awards at important film festivals. Their Stuttgart 21 documentary Alarm am Hauptbahnhof was awarded the Grimme Prize in 2012. How Time Flies won many international film awards and made it all the way to Cannes (Semaine de la critique 2001).

The two graduates of the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg are based in Stuttgart and give a face to the state of Baden-Württemberg and its people with their documentaries, which are of particular artistic value. With their unmistakable approach to a subject, their refreshing humor, their precise powers of observation and their experimental narrative style, they create outstanding studies and portraits. In their previous works, they have focused on time (How Time Flies, 2000), money (Schotter wie Heu, 2002), faith (Der große Navigator, 2007), power (Alarm am Hauptbahnhof, 2011), fame and fortune (Where’s the Beer and when do we get paid? ,2012), poetry and truth (Wer hat Angst vor Sibylle Berg, 2015) and being there/mass and individual (Narren, 2021).

After training as a pastry chef in a Munich café, Wiltrud Baier studied at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy. Sigrun Köhler who had applied there with flip-books, studied camera and documentary film. She was looking for a camerawoman for her diploma film and trusted the experimental Wiltrud Baier who graduated in animation in 1999. They describes their seven feature films as »futureproof«, i. e. timeless films that are particularly enduring because you enjoy watching them again and again alone or with friends.

Böller und Brot have received grants from the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Deveron Projects (Huntly, Scotland), Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, Cité internationale des Arts Paris and a studio grant from the City of Stuttgart.

In 2004, Böller und Brot realized the 1st International Flipbook Festival at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, a large film festival for small flipbooks, which met with a great response from the public and was extremely positively reviewed in national newspapers.