Found Memories, The Boy Who Was A King win at RiverRun

The RiverRun International Film Festival ended Sunday night in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with Julia Murat’s Found Memories (Historias que so existem quando lembradas) and Andrey Paounov’s The Boy Who Was A King leading its 24 awards, as best narrative feature and best documentary feature respectively.

“RiverRun strives to bring new faces and fresh perspectives in independent film to the citizens of North Carolina,” said RiverRun Executive Director Andrew Rodgers. “The positive reactions we’ve received from audiences are evidence of the high quality of our selections. With every Festival, we try to find even better films than the year before, and I think that we’ve succeeded in 2012.”

The Awards were:

Audience Award - Best Narrative Feature: Monsieur Lazhar, directed by Philippe Falardeau 

Audience Award - Best Documentary Feature: Chasing Ice, directed by Jeff Orlowski

Audience Award - Best American Indie (Altered States programme): Small, Beautifully Moving Parts, directed by Annie Howell and Lisa Robinson 

Best Narrative Feature: Found Memories, directed by Julia Murat

Peter Brunette Award for Best Director: Julia Murat for Found Memories

Best Actor: Mohamed Fellag, Monsieur Lazhar (honorable mention to Anders Danielsen Lie for Oslo, August 31st)

Best Actress: Nadezhda Markina for Elena (honorable mention to Sonia Guedes for Found Memories)

Best Cinematography: Lucio Bonelli for Found Memories

Best Screenplay: Philippe Falardeau, Monsieur Lazhar

Best Documentary Feature: The Boy Who Was A King, directed by Andrey Paounov

Best Documentary Director: Lauren Greenfield, The Queen of Versailles

Human Rights Award: Love Free Or Die, directed by Macky Alston

Best Narrative Short: The Trip (A Viagem), directed by Simao Cayatte (honorable mention They Say (Dicen))

Best Documentary Short: Cutting Loose, directed by Finlay Pretsell and Adrian McDowall

Best Animated Short: Something Left, Something Taken, directed by Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter (honorable mention Luminaris and Bottle)

Best Student Narrative Short: Against The Sea (Contra El Mar) directed by Richard Parkin

Best Student Documentary Short: Where We Live directed by Fady Hadid

Best Student Animated Short: The Reality Clock directed by Amanda Tasse (honorable mention Bottle)

Earlier in the festival, Paul Schneider was presented with the Emerging Master award (see story here), and the new Spark Awards for rising talents were presented to Amy Seimetz, David Oyelowo, and Brady Corbet.