Celebrated graduate advertising film "Poverty Knows Many Faces" - Cannes Gold and VDW Award for Isabel Prahl

Isabel Prahl’s debut at this year's ‘Young Director Award’ in Cannes turned a few heads. ‘Armut kennt viele Gesichter’ (poverty knows many faces) earned considerable applause at the Croisette and was awarded the 1st prize at the awards ceremony on the 23rd of June. And again, at the VDW Award in Frankfurt, the spot stood out amongst the submissions in the university category.

Isabel Prahl and Maximilian Kaiser were presented with the award, which includes a service prize worth 10,000 Euro from ACHT Frankfurt. The upcoming director, who was born in 1978 in Münster, was all smiles when she accepted the award. The charming resident of Cologne let the auditorium know, that she is going to use the prize money to produce her diploma film.

We met Isabel at the VDW after party at Nu Soul and asked her what we can expect from her in the not too distant future. “As I said, the first thing on my agenda is my diploma. I have been procrastinating it over all the work. Now I've set myself a deadline and this time it is not budging. It may sound like some tough love but I am really looking forward to it. It is going to be a 30 minute short feature, which I wrote myself and I can feel the tingling in my fingers: The wheels are set in motion . . .”

Anything that comes to her mind now that she is about to finish the KHM? “.. a fantastic place to make films. Like the name says, KHM is an art university and you can work very freely, which is a definite advantage. You can tell by looking at films, they are extremely diverse. Some are experimental, documentary style, fictional and even ads.

We are already looking forward to Isabel's diploma film, which is sure to tackle a red-hot issue within a cinematic context.