The Argentine festival closed on May 16 after screening 147 films over eight days.

Matías Herrera Córdoba’s Maid (Criada) scooped the top prize at the sixth edition of the Marfici Festival de Cine Independiente Mar del Plata, which wrapped in Buenos Aires on Sunday (May 16).

The jury gave a special mention to South Korea’s Zhao Liang for Petition and to The Peddlar (El Ambulante), directed by Lucas Marcheggiano, Adriana Yurcovich and Eduardo de la Serna, just days after it won the audience award at Munich’s Dok.fest. It missed out on a prize at last month’s Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival.

The judging trio comprised British director and producer Mike Dibb, whose was the subject of a retrospective during the festival, Argentine critic and journalist Juan Aguzzi and US film-maker Shelly Silver, who were all equally impressed with the line-up.

At the pre-vote seminar, Silver compared Marfici to this year’s Berlin. “The selection is just as good,” she said. “The Argentine films are strong and the way the world has been observed is interesting. In terms of what I like and dislike, it’s just as balanced as in Berlin,” she added.

Aguzzi also praised the selection, calling it “diverse. We have been privy to new ways of filming which is also exciting.”

And Dibb added that the festival was extremely rich in terms of numbers. “I just wouldn’t get to see this amount of documentaries in the UK,” he said.

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