At this year’s closing night of Austria’s most important festival DIAGONALE, the Drehbuchverband (Austria’s equivalent to the Writer’s Guild) has awarded AFI graduate Ernst Gossner with its most important award – the Thomas Pluch Screenplay Award for his screenplay for SOUTH OF PICO.

This award is presented since 1993 and named after Austrian screenwriter Thomas Pluch who died in 1992. Last year’s winner was Stefan Ruzowitzky with the Academy-Award-winning “COUNTERFEITERS”.

The jurors Karin Koch (producer Dschoint Ventschr Films, Zurich), Alexandra Kordes (producer, Kordes & Kordes Film, Berlin) and Torsten Schulz (Screenwriter, Berlin) emphasized the humanity of the characters and their arc during an emotionally charged day in Los Angeles where five story lines reach an unexpected high point.

Here is the link to the Drehbuchverband website (in German):

http://www.drehbuchverband.at/page.php?modul=HTMLPages&pid=56

Here’s a babelfish version for those who like bad translations:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=de_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.drehbuchverband.at%2fpage.php%3fmodul%3dHTMLPages%26pid%3d56