Court wins at Singapore film festival

At the 25th Singapore International Film Festival, Indian justice system drama Court won Best Film and Best Director for Chaitanya Tamhane at the Silver Screen Awards yesterday (Dec 13).

Earlier this year at the Venice Film Festival, the film also picked up Best Film in the Orrizonti section and the Lion of the Future - Luigi de Laurentiis award for a debut film.

The Silver Screen Awards jury, headed by Wang Xiaoshuai, stated: “This glittering gem dazzles with its simplicity, elegance and breathtaking naturalism. Every facet of this film shines, from the humanity of its screenplay, to the originality of its structure, to the assuredness of its direction. A brilliant achievement.”

The Silver Screen Awards this year has two categories - the Asian Feature Film Competition and the inaugural Southeast Asian Short Film Competition. (See below for full awards results.)

SGIFF wraps today with closing film In The Absence Of The Sun, directed by Indonesian filmmaker Lucky Kuswandi.

The festival has drawn more than 10,000 admissions in total. Organizers report 23 sold-out screenings out of the total of 147 films screened.

Looking back on this year’s edition, which is the first after a two-year hiatus, SGIFF executive director Yuni Hadi said, “The overall feedback has been very encouraging in terms of the film selection, the Filmmaker in Focus , the Southeast Asian Film Lab and also the Southeast Asian short films. We have invested our resources into creating platforms for Southeast Asian voices to shine with our Lab, competition and Youth Jury programme which gives out the Youth Jury Award for the Southeast Asian short film competition. Their ages are 17 - 25 and they have been watching the Southeast Asian shorts and writing about them under the mentorship of Kong Rithdee and other lecturers. I think we aim to give a deeper understanding to Southeast Asian cinema starting with critical thinking and writing by the next generation of thinkers.”

More than 100 filmmakers and actors attended for films and masterclasses, including John Woo, Zhang Ziyi, Juliette Binoche, Cheng Pei Pei, Tong Dawei, Chen Bolin and Nastassja Kinski.

“Through the last 11 days the energy has been very good in all the post film discussions and people having lots of questions for the visiting directors and actors. There’s been a healthy response to Ahmad Abdalla’s films [the filmmaker in focus from Egypt] and Ahmad said that through SGIFF, he’s received emails from other festivals about his films. This is his first time to Asia,” said Hadi.

Asian Feature Film Category Awards

Best Film: Court

Best Director: Chaitanya Tamhane

Best Performance: Sekar Sari (Siti)

Special Mention: Alive

Southeast Asian Short Film Category Awards

Best Southeast Asian Short Film: Dahdi (Granny), dir. Kirsten Tan

Best Singapore Short Film: Not Working Today, dir. Shijie Tan

Best Director: Aditya Ahmad (On Stopping The Rain)

Special Mention: Vanishing Horizon Of The Sea, dir. Chulayarnnon Siriphol