Inaugural international film competition sponsored and hosted by CENTOGENE in 2021 in Berlin

Competition details revealed at today's kick-off event: renowned jury composed of producers, directors, and film scholars; prize money amounting to 30,000 euros

Insightful presentations and comprehensive cultural program featuring top-class films and performances by award-winning musicians round off the day

Cambridge, MA, USA & Rostock/Berlin, Germany, February 29, 2020: CENTOGENE, the world leader in diagnostics for rare hereditary diseases, seeks to increase public awareness of these diseases. Today, on Rare Disease Day, the company is bringing together scientists, patients, their families, and advocacy organizations, as well as renowned cultural professionals to kick off a film contest with considerable prize winnings. On February 28, 2021, CENTOGENE will host the inaugural International Rare Disease Film Festival in Berlin. Using film as an emotional medium, the festival aims to strengthen public and political awareness ─ shining a spotlight on the importance of increasing the general visibility of rare diseases and providing information about them to positively impact patients' lives.

Renowned Jury to Award Three Best Submissions With a Total of 30,000 Euros

The International Rare Disease Film Festival 2021 provides a platform for filmmakers to creatively address the topic of rare diseases and an opportunity to present their work to a global audience. CENTOGENE will award the three best submissions with a total of 30,000 euros. All artistic genres - short movies, animations, experimental movies, and feature films - can be submitted to the competition, and all competing films will be published on the website of the Rare Disease Film Festival prior to the event. Filmmakers can submit their projects until October 31, 2020 via www.rdff.eu.

The three best movies will be chosen by a renowned jury composed of producers, directors, and film scholars:

• Heino Deckert

Producer of more than 120 documentaries, including the Oscar-nominated documentary Aquarela by Kossakovsky. Heino Deckert's company Deckert Distribution is one of the leading global distributors for documentaries.

• Anna Grün

Documentary Producer for public service programs, among others, with a special focus on scientific subjects.

• Gunter Hanfgarn

Producer of documentaries and feature films as well as many international, award-winning co-productions.

• Florian Weghorn

Program Manager of Berlinale Talents, the talent development initiative of the international film festival

• Dr. Susanne Winnacker

Deputy Director of Schauspielhaus Bochum and former Rector of Rostock University of Music and Theatre (until 2019)

"We are proud to have gained such a top-level jury for the International Rare Disease Film Festival in Berlin. This illustrates how important the subject has become for society - not only in science, but also among artists, culture professionals, and mainstream society," says Prof. Dr. Arndt Rolfs, CEO and founder of CENTOGENE.

Rare Diseases Will Have an Increasing Significance Over the Next Years - CENTOGENE Wants to Depict This

"Movies are a classic communication channel for personal narratives, because they are able to evoke emotions and have a broader, and particularly sustainable, reach in the general public," said Prof. Dr. Arndt Rolfs in explaining the basis for his idea. "We are extremely pleased that we have been able to attract several top-level directors for the film competition, and we are looking forward to further entries in the coming months. Together, we want to make sure that rare diseases - a topic that will have an ever-increasing significance over the next years - receive the attention they deserve. After all, more than 350 million people are affected worldwide and the way in which many patients are managing their disease is incredibly impressive - and we want to portray this."

At this year's Rare Disease Day event, filmmakers showcased films highlighting the unique perspective of rare disease patients and their families as well as the impact rare diseases have on social interaction. David Sieveking presented an excerpt from his movie about the disease of the late director, actor, and author Gerald Uhlig, and the British filmmaker Elle Ralph showed her short film My Dad is Orange. With his movie Working with the Children's Hospital in Lahore, Tom Neitzke offered sensitive insights into the everyday life of patients and doctors in Pakistan. An impressive music program from so-called Rare Talents, such as the award-winning multi percussionist Christoph Sietzen, the marimba ensemble WAVE QUARTET, and the jazz band SHAKE STEW, founded by bassist Lukas Kranzelbinder, round off the day at eWerk in Berlin.

For more information, visit:
www.rdd2020.eu

Media contact:

CENTOGENE
press@centogene.com

MC Services AG
Anne Hennecke
centogene@mc-services.eu

About CENTOGENE
CENTOGENE engages in diagnosis and research around rare diseases transforming real-world clinical and genetic data into actionable information for patients, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies. Our goal is to bring rationality to treatment decisions and to accelerate the development of new orphan drugs by using our extensive rare disease knowledge, including epidemiological and clinical data and innovative biomarkers. CENTOGENE has developed a global proprietary rare disease platform based on our real-world data repository with approximately 2.1 billion weighted data points from approximately 500,000 patients representing over 120 different countries as of December 31, 2019, or an average of approximately 600 data points per patient.

The Company's platform includes epidemiologic, phenotypic and genetic data that reflects a global population, and also a biobank of these patients' blood samples. CENTOGENE believes this represents the only platform that comprehensively analyzes multi-level data to improve the understanding of rare hereditary diseases, which can aid in the identification of patients and improve our pharmaceutical partners' ability to bring orphan drugs to the market. As of December 31, 2019, the Company collaborated with over 35 pharmaceutical partners for over 40 different rare diseases.