COLOGNE, Germany - The fantasy epic Cloud Atlas may have divided audiences but the German Film Academy was united its support of the $100 million production from directors Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings, nominating the film in nine categories, including Best Film, for the 2013 German Film Awards, also called the Lolas.
Cloud Atlas, which features an all-star cast including Tom Hanks, Halle Barry, Hugh Grant and Hugo Weaving, is the big-budget outlier among the German Film Award nominees, otherwise made up of low-budget art house productions.
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The David to the Cloud Atlas' Goliath is Oh Boy, the black-and-white film debut of first-time director Jan-Ole Gerster, which received eight Lola nominations, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor for star Tom Schilling. An ironic, at times both funny and tragic look at a young man who drops out of university to wander the streets of Berlin, Oh Boy was the sleeper hit of 2012 in Germany, earning more than $2 million at the box office.
Other art house standouts competing for the Lola for Best Film include Margarethe von Trotta's Hannah Arendt; literary adaptation The Wall from director Julian Roman Polsler, the semi-autobiographic Quellen des Lebens (Sources of Life) from Oskar Roehler (Atomized) and Lore, the WWII drama from Australian director Cate Shortland, which was Australia's entry for this year's foreign language Oscar.
Von Trotta, Gerster and the Cloud Atlas trio of Tykwer and Andy and Lana Wachowskis will duel it out in the Best Director category at this year's Lolas.
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Tom Schilling of Oh Boy is the stand out favorite among Lola Best Actor nominees, which also include Sabin Tambrea for the period drama Ludwig II and Edin Hasanovic for the prison drama Shifting the Blame. The Best Actress race is more interesting, featuring as it does three generations of stand-out female performers: Barbara Sukowa for Hannah Arendt, Martina Gedeck for The Wall and young Austrian actress Birgit Minichmayr, nominated for her role in Matthias Glasner's Mercy.
The one notable snub was the drama Home for the Weekend from acclaimed German director Hans-Christian Schmid, which received just one Lola nomination -- in the Best Supporting Actor category for Ernst Stotzner.
Here is the full list of 2013 Lola nominees.
The winners of this year's German Film Awards will be announced in Berlin April 26.