On 19 March, DBSV organised the 17th edition of its annual film festival for audio description with over 500 attendees from politics, the film industry and the community of blind and partially sighted people in Europe. Awards were given in the categories “Cinema”, “Television”, “Documentary” and “Children” as well as in form of an audience prize. A record number of almost 90 movies were submitted this year and the jury noted the increasingly high quality of audio description in German-language productions. For the first time, Swiss-German and French-German co-productions were also nominated for the award. Big winner of the night was the German edition of the cult-programme Sesame Street, which won in two categories after having been made accessible only in 2018. In a panel discussion with Claudia Roth, Vice-President of the German Parliament, DBSV Executive Director Andreas Bethke suggested that European film funding should be conditioned on the production of an audio description. This echo of an EBU demand for the upcoming European elections was met with rousing applause from the attendees. DBSV warmly invites EBU members already now to join us for the next round of this film festival in March 2020 and celebrate accessible films together.
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