Lance Hammer's Ballast won the Grand Prix of the first International Festival of Film and New Media- Cinema City in Novi Sad, Serbia (Jun 14-21), worth $15,000. In the competition for the Grand Prix were all feature films of the festival, including the Serbian competition, where the best film award worth $8,000 went to Stefan Arsenijevic's Berlin entry and best director winner at Cottbus, Sofia and Wiesbaden Love And Other Crimes.

Dejan Zecevic won best director for The Fourth Man, the film's star Nikola Kojo won the best actor prize and editor Marko Glusac went away with the award in his category. Darko Bajic's On The Beautiful Blue Danube took three prizes, best actress for Ana Franic, best screenplay for Nebojsa Romcevic and best original score for Boris Kovac. Milos Kodemo won best cinematography for Who The Fuck Is Milos Brankovic.

The jury was comprised of Dutch critic Peter van Bueren, UK director Dom Rotheroe, director of Thessaloniki International Film Festival Despina Mouzaki, French actor Thomas Poulard and US-based cinematographer Radan Popovic.

In the competition programme Up To 10,000 Bucks - for low budget films - best film went to Serbian Milos Pusic's short Lullaby For A Boy. The two Serbian FIPRESCI sections awarded Norwegian Bernd Bader's The Art Of Negative Thinking and Swedish Tomas Alfredson's Let The Right One In.

The special prize for exceptional contribution to contemporary film expression was given to Korean auteur Chang-dong Lee, who also enjoyed a retrospective of his impressive work. The festival was very well attended, with 55,000 admissions sold, and closed by the special screening of CSNY: Deja Vu.

Topics