The World Media Festivals held annually in the media city of Hamburg recognize exceptional achievements in the international TV and corporate media industries. The crème de la crème from around the world in each discipline are presented with a Television and Corporate Media Award in silver or gold in one of 14 main categories. This year, the renowned jury of experts gave particular recognition in the Web category to the BIRKENSTORIES Web series, bestowing the intermedia-globe gold award for webisodes to BIRKENSTORY #15, which is about the well-known nature and wildlife filmmaker Matto Barfuss.

The BIRKENSTORIES are a series of video portraits that tell the stories of people who wear Birkenstocks. They all focus on characters who are unique – some in a big way, some in a small way. The individual episodes take place in locations all over the world, be it a ballerina with the Royal Ballet in London, an American Nobel Laureate, or the manager of a world-famous punk rock label. What all of these people have in common is a firm belief of many years standing in sandals made by BIRKENSTOCK. They include the well-known wildlife filmmaker Matto Barfuss, who spent months living among cheetahs in the 1990s to learn from nature and from the animals. BIRKENSTORY #15 came about in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, where he was shooting his latest film, which is about meerkats. Despite the area also being home to venomous scorpions, he wears BIRKENSTOCK sandals there all the time.

When choosing the award winners, the independent jury of international film production and communications experts rate the festival submissions received from around the world not only on the basis of their creative and technical excellence, but also and in particular in terms of their successful and effective communication with the target group in question. For two years now, the World Media Festivals have been recognizing outstanding media solutions in the form of audiovisual, online, and print productions for their creative inspiration in the fields of information, education, and entertainment.