Director Zaza Rusadze distinguished with MuVi Award for Best German Music Video

Georgian filmmaker Zaza Rusadze has received plaudits for co-directing the music video for the track Eurydike by the band Kreidler after the work was selected for the MuVi Award for Best German Music Video from the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen this week.

Rusadze, whose work in cinema has seen him featured at Berlin and Hong Kong international festivals, earned the prize as the 66th edition of the German event concluded on Monday after a digital run due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He was distinguished for the four-minute video - alongside co-director Anreas Reihse - with the prize promoted as "world's first festival prize for music videos".

To appreciate the effort of transferring a very complex topic into the aesthetics of a 4-minute music video, the MuVi jury decided to award this year’s first prize to Eurydike by Zaza Rusadze and Andreas Reihse," the jury panel summary for their selection read.

Picked for the award by the jury team comprised of German writer Max Dax, Latvian curator Agnese Logina and British writer Adam Harper, the video also earned the two directors a €2,000 money prize.

The MuVi prize was established by the Oberhausen festival in 1999. The latest edition of the festival ran between May 13-18, with awards handed out on Monday.

Rusadze previously directed works including the 2013 film A Fold in My Blanket, named Best Feature Film at the Queer Lisboa international festival and nominated for Best First Feature at the Berlin International Film Festival as well as for two awards at the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Moving to Germany from Georgia in the mid-1990s, he studied at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf while also working for German TV channels and film festivals. Beside filmmaking work he has since 2015 worked in the selection committee of the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film.