On 3 November, the Siegfried-Kracauer-Preis for the best film criticism will be awarded in Cologne. Five pieces have been nominated, selected from 83 submissions; the jury assessed them anonymously. The procedure itself sends a signal: the award is intended to recognise not the loudest voice or the best-known name, but first and foremost the work on the page. Yet what does it mean to engage closely with a film – while also judging it independently?
The shortlist brings together very different subjects: Annette Brauerhoch writes about Barbara Loden’s ‘Wanda’, Esther Buss about Alexandre Koberidze’s ‘Dry Leaf’, Mathis Raabe about Francis Lawrence’s ‘The Long Walk’, Sonja M. Schultz about Lutz Pehnert’s ‘Kommunist’ (Communist), and Lukas Stern about Adrian Goiginger’s ‘Vier minus Drei’ (Four Minus Three). Their nomination does not make these reviews a shared school of thought. It does, however, open up a space to ask what criticism can achieve if it is to go beyond a recommendation or a thumbs-up.
Engagement Is Not a Licence
A film cannot simply be summed up as a plot. It organises gazes, time, sounds and bodies; its effects also emerge through pauses, repetitions and omissions. Anyone writing about it must engage with that particular experience. Such engagement does not mean declaring one’s own response to be a universal truth. It becomes productive when it can be tested against the film: against a shot, an editing decision, a rhythm or the way characters are framed.
Reasoned judgement begins where description and evaluation can be distinguished. A review can make clear what it perceives, which standards it applies and where its interpretation remains uncertain. That does not make it neutral – a view entirely without a standpoint is barely conceivable. But it makes the critic’s position visible and therefore open to discussion. Independence is less an absence of feeling than a way of working: looking closely, giving reasons, disclosing interests.
Kracauer’s View of Cinema
Siegfried Kracauer, after whom the prize is named, began writing film reviews for the arts pages of the ‘Frankfurter Zeitung’ in 1922, combining aesthetic observation with social analysis. The German Literature Archive Marbach sums up his ambition with a sentence from 1932: ‘A film critic of standing is conceivable only as a social critic.’ Kracauer’s perspective reminds us that films do not emerge in isolation from the worlds in which they are made and lived. At the same time, his legacy offers no ready-made formula. A critical perspective today must also ask whose experiences are treated as universal and whose perspectives are missing.
This creates a productive tension between two tasks: taking the film seriously as a crafted work and questioning the social conditions underpinning its images. If form alone is celebrated, power and exclusion can slip out of view. If the film is read merely as evidence for a predetermined argument, its own ambiguity risks being lost. Criticism holds both together without resolving the contradiction prematurely.
New Formats, the Same Responsibility
The fact that the prize recognises an innovative format alongside written pieces broadens the notion of criticism. In 2026, this award goes to the six-part SWR Kultur podcast series ‘Werner Herzog – zu groß für Deutschland’ (Werner Herzog – Too Big for Germany). Audio can use voice, editing and documentary material differently from a written review; the format does not, however, alter the responsibility to make observation and interpretation distinguishable.
Intimacy conveyed through storytelling therefore needs boundaries too. A personal approach can draw attention, but must not serve as a substitute for arguments. And anyone writing about films should reflect on the conditions of their own work: invitations, for instance, advance access or other relationships that might be relevant to their judgement. Not every close connection is a conflict of interest; concealed or unexamined, it can nevertheless damage trust.
The Kracauer-Preis decides who receives an award, not a definitive ranking of criticism. Its greater value lies in prompting the question that every review must answer anew: how can a film be taken seriously without being given the last word? Judgement gains strength not through distance at any price, but through reasons that can be followed – and through a willingness to acknowledge one’s own view as one view among others.
Original reviewed by the editors · 31 October 2026
