The Filmpreis Köln, endowed with €25,000 and presented by the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW and the City of Cologne, was awarded to Werner Herzog in 2025.
Werner Herzog has shaped genres, won dozens of awards, and created masterpieces across multiple art forms over the course of his more than 60-year career. It began at just 24 years old, when he received the Bundesfilmpreis for his feature debut SIGNS OF LIFE. His subsequent career in German cinema of the 1970s — with films such as AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD, THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER, and STROSZEK — is the stuff of legend.
Since his youth, he has also been a world traveler and a man of many talents: he not only shot films in Peru, Colombia, and Ghana, but also directed opera productions in Italy, ran a film festival, and wrote books in his adopted home of the United States.
His world-famous documentaries have taken him into prehistoric caves, onto erupting volcanoes, into the forests of Alaska, across the ice deserts of Antarctica — and, most recently, onto the high plains of Angola for his new film GHOST ELEPHANTS. Along the way, he became a cult figure not only within the film industry, thanks to legendary episodes such as his walk from Munich to Paris, eating his own shoe, and giving an interview while being shot at.
Even the internet generation has embraced him through his appearances in hit series (The Simpsons, The Mandalorian). He is both artist and artwork, forever young and eternally wise — and, like many of his protagonists, a perpetual seeker.
The winners of the Film Award Cologne in recent years are:
2024 Raoul Peck
2023 Justine Triet
2022 Michel Hazanavicius
2021 Sir Steve McQueen
2020 Dominik Graf
2019 Nicolas Winding Refn
2018 Luca Guadagnino
2017 Jane Campion
2016 Claire Denis
2015 Paolo Sorrentino
2014 Lars of Trier
2013 Harmony Korine
2012 François Ozone
2011 Tarsem Singh
2010 David Lynch
2009 Roman Polanski
2008 Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne
2007 Paul Haggis
