The prestigious prize, which is awarded by the Deutsches Studierendenwerk in cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, honors outstanding artistic positions by students at German art academies.

Minh Anh Nguyen convinced the jury with her artistic practice, which is characterized by an in-depth examination of social issues and experimental narrative forms. Her films deal with themes such as identity, memory and cultural hybridity. In her artistic practice, she deals with the voids left by trauma, loss and the unsaid. By combining archive material, fiction and documentary elements, she brings the invisible to light and gives a voice to the unspoken. By interweaving personal stories with performative restagings, she reflects on the relationship between memory and silence and creates spaces for recognition and visibility.

The jury particularly emphasized Minh Anh Nguyen's sincere narrative style. Her handling of emotional material, which she interweaves in a variety of narrative ways, makes her language particularly accessible and creates points of contact for a shared understanding of human stories. The jury also recognized her early professionalism in cinematic techniques, which enables her to experiment with different cinematic processes and to create complex and complex narratives.

Minh Anh Nguyen is an artist and filmmaker. She was born in Germany as the daughter of former Vietnamese contract workers. Since 2018, she has been studying media art at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design with a focus on screenwriting and directing for documentary, fictional and hybrid films. Her work has been presented at Filmfest Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel, the Independent Days International Film Festival in Karlsruhe and the Sehsüchte Film Festival in Babelsberg, among others. She has been a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation since 2021.

The “Bundespreis für Kunststudierende” is aimed at the 25 art academies and academies organized in the Kunsthochschulenkonferenz (KHK) in Germany. They each nominate two of their students or student teams. The Federal Prize for Art Students is awarded every two years and is an important forum for young artists in Germany. The prize is awarded by an independent jury. The BMBF has been funding the prize since 1983, currently with around 270,000 euros for each round of the competition. The Deutsche Studierendenwerk organizes the competition; the students' works will be exhibited at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn for around two months from 6 November 2025.