The recipients of the Lübeck Script Development Grant at the 67th Nordic Film Days Lübeck have been announced

Lübeck, November 5. - The latest recipients of the Nordic Film Days’ Lübeck Script Development Grant were announced as part of the opening ceremonies of the festival, which runs from November 5 to 9, 2025. The grant for an established author to develop a new theatrical film was awarded to Laurens Pérol for his project “Electrified” (“Unter Strom”). The grant for a visual storytelling project in any format and platform by an author with a relationship to Lübeck went to Kristina Dreit and Felix Röben for their film and installation project “Deep Blue Screen”.

The two were selected from more than 90 submissions by a jury made up of Barbara Häbe, director of theatrical/television films at broadcaster Arte, Julia Weigl, co-director of the MunichFilm Festival, and digital communications consultant Marcel Wicker.

“We congratulate Laurens Pérol, Kristina Dreit, and Felix Röben and bid them a warm welcome to the 67th Nordic Film Days and to Lübeck”, said Susanne Kasimir, the NFL’s managing director, “It gives us great pleasure to further the development of these twocompelling projects here in Lübeck”. The head of the Lübeck Script Development Grant, Martin Rehbock, will mentor the recipients over the course of the year.

Laurens Pérol is no stranger to Lübeck. At the 2023 Nordic Film Days Lübeck, he won the Friends of the NFL prize for best feature debut with “Å Øve” (“Practice”). In his new project, “Electrified”, he tackles the issue of the world’s boundless hunger for energy and uses an individual life to formulate the challenges we face as a society. In explaining their selection, the jury wrote, “The author takes us on a journey of an explosive political nature that illuminates a personal destiny whose outcome could affect millions of people. It is a powerful story of exceptional circumstances in everyday life”.

Kristina Dreit is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Filmmaker Felix Röben studied social and media sciences in Iceland, and film & video communication at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. The immersive video installation “Deep Blue Screen” puts the Bay of Lübeck at the centre of an audio-visual narrative. Set against the backdrop of salvage work begun in 2024 to clear residual munitions, and increasing ecological changes to the coastal area, the project blends vestigial tracks in the landscape with personal memories of childhood and youth in the 2000s. It poetically traces the historical deposits of perception and memory, and queries the relationship between humans and the environment.

In explaining their selection, the jury pointed out that “both artists incorporate their own lives and experiences in a familiar place into an immersive video installation. The starting point for this project is the Bay of Lübeck as a symbol of nostalgia, loss, and environmental change. With this poetic long-term observational study over the last 25 years we are immersed in the here and now with the protagonists, only to surface with a new perspective and appreciation for our immediate surroundings”.

The Lübeck Script Development Grant was awarded this year for the third time. The grants, of € 35,000 each, are funded by the Possehl Foundation for a period of three years. In addition to the initial grant, the foundation will also provide the recipients with individualised advice, including script consulting, as well as residency, research, and networking opportunities in Lübeck and at the Nordic Film Days festival. The grant recipients will be hosted by the Nordic Film Days Lübeck, in cooperation with the non-profits Kino Koki repertory cinema and the Waldzimmer cultural association, as well as the Lübeck municipal library. One special aspect of the Lübeck Script Development Grant is an open exchange with the city’s public. Anyone who is interested can attend workshop discussions, curated film series, and script readings, participating directly in the creative process. The recipients willalso be actively networked with local filmmakers and players in the cultural scene.