Hannah Arendt takes Silver Spike while The Fifth Season receives jury special mention.

Nabil Ayouch’s God’s Horses [pictured], a portrait of the suicide bombers who killed almost 50 people in Casablanca in 2003, has won the Golden Spike at the 57th Valladolid Film Festival, which ran Oct 20-27 in Castilla. 

Alta Films, the distributor of the film, received a $77,000 award to aid the film’s release in Spain. An entrant at this year’s Cannes Un Certain Regard strand, Ayouch’s film is an intimate portrayal of a group of boys who grow up surrounded by misery without civil rights.

Hannah Arendt, the new film by Margarethe Von Trotta, was awarded with the Silver Spike. The film tells the controversy created by the famous philosopher when she visited the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jersualem. The Fifth Season, by Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth, a co-production of Belgium, Holland and France about strange natural phenomena in a rural environment, received the Special Mention of the Jury, with the film also winning the FIPRESCI price.

Another big winner was Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone, with Audiard scooping best director and best actor going to Matthias Schoenaerts. 

The prize for Best Actress was shared between Elle Fanning for Sally Potter’s Ginger & Rosa and Greisy Mena for Luis Mandoki’s La Vida Breve y Precoz de Sabina Rivas. The Pilar Miró prize for best new director Pilar Miró was handed to Australian director Cate Shortland for Lore, a drama set during the American invasion in Germany in World War Two. 

Best cinematography was awarded to Giles Nuttgens for his work on Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children, an adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s well-known novel, while the public pirze went to Daniele Vicari’s Diaz: Don’t Clean Up This Blood, centred on the final days of the 2001 G8 Summit.

Mexican director Jorge Fons presided over the international Jury which included Spanish film-maker Judith Colell, Belgium director Geofrrey Enthoven, cinema critic Jaume Figueras, actress Rosa María Sardá and director Imanol Uribe.

For the full list of winners, visit the festival’s website.

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