Other prize winners include Our Grand Despair, A Useful Life, and Hair.

Egyptian director Ahmad Abdalla’s Microphone won the Golden Tulip award for best film in international competition on Saturday night at the 30th Istanbul Film Festival.

Abdalla’s second feature, Microphone is a low-budget drama set in the world of underground art and music in Alexandria.
 
The special jury prize was shared by Seyfi Teoman’s Our Grand Despair from Turkey and Federico Veiroj’s A Useful Life from Uruguay.
 
The prizes, given by a jury headed by Claire Denis, come with a €25,000 award from the Eczacibasi Group. €10,000 goes to the director of the Golden Tulip winner while the Turkish distributor of the film receives €10,000 and the remaining €5,000 goes to the special jury prize winner.
 
Joining Denis on the jury were Italian actress Anna Bonaiuto, Toronto Film Festival chief Piers Handling, Turkish writer Perihan Magden, US producer Jim Stark, Canadian film-maker Jacob Tierney and former Istanbul festival head Hulya Ucansu.
 
In the national competition section, the prize for best Turkish film of the year went to Tayfan Pirselimoglu’s Hair, a drama set in a wig shop in Istanbul.
 
The best director award also went to Pirselimoglu, while Sedat Yilmaz’s Press won the special jury prize.
 
Nazan Kesal was named best actress for her performance in Hair and Ahmet Mekin best actor for Unseen. Belma Bas won the screenplay prize for Zephyr, Our Grand Despair’s Birgit Gudjonsdottir won the cinematography award and Ahmet Kenan Bilgic won the music award for Merry-Go-Round.
 
The national jury was headed by director Reha Erdem and included actress Tulin Ozen, writer and critic Fatih Ozguven, Karlovy Vary artistic director Karel Och and film critic Jay Weissberg.
 
The FIPRESCI awards went to Tran Anh Hung’s Norwegian Wood in international competition and to Press in the national competition.
 
On Friday, the Meetings On The Bridge industry platform concluded; The Film Development workshop gave awards to the projects Yozgat Blues by Mahmut Fazil Coskun, Toz Ruhu by Nesimi Yetik, and Mavi Dalga (Blue Wave) by Zeynep Dadak and Merve Kayan.
 
Yozgat Blues also won the Republic Of Turkey Ministry Of Tourism And Culture Support award of $10,000 as well as an audio post-production support award of TL25,000 from Melodika.
 
Yetik received a €10,000 support award presented by the French Cinema Centre for his project Toz Rohu.
 
And Blue Wave was awarded the Binger Lab Script Consultancy scholarship of €2,500 given for the first time this year.
 
The seven projects to be supported by the Turkish-German co-production fund were announced late last week.

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