How I Ended This Summer wins LFF best film award

Alexei Popogrebsky’s How I Ended This Summer has scooped the best film award at the 54th BFI London Film Festival.

The award was presented to Popogrebsky by jury head Patricia Clarkson at the LFF’s second standalone awards ceremony, which took place at London’s LSO St Luke’s this evening.

Clarkson said Popogrebsky had “combined stunning cinematography with painterly attention to production detail and drawn intense performances from actors Grigory Dobrygin and Sergei Puskepalis.”

The best film jury, which was made up of Clarkson, Gabriel Byrne, Sandy Powell, Shekhar Kapur and John Hillcoat, also gave a special commendation to Joanna Hogg’s Archipelago.

In other awards, British director Clio Barnard was a double winner, picking up the Best British Newcomer award and the Sutherland Award for the director of the most original and imaginative first feature for debut feature The Arbor.

The jury also praised Phan Dang Di’s Don’t Be Afraid, Bi and Michael Rowe’s Leap Year.

Meanwhile, the Grierson Award for Best Documentary went to Janus Metz’s controversial documentary Armadillo, about Danish soldiers in Afghanistan. The film, which won the top prize at Cannes Critics Week, has also just been selected for the European Film Academy best documentary award. The film was chosen by a jury headed by Kevin Macdonald, who said that the film displayed “extraordinary intimacy and stylistic sophistication.”

127 Hours director Danny Boyle was presented with a Fellowship award by Stephen Daldry. During his acceptance speech Boyle lamented that Britain wasn’t as much of a filmloving nation as US, India or France, but predicted that this would soon change as film formats and platforms evolve: “Something is going to change very soon, you can feel it. Celluloid is dying and digital is coming. The portals on which we watch these films are changing as well. It will lead to a coming generation that needs to be bold. Boldness has genius in it. If you can dream of doing it begin it.”

Meanwhile, director Martin Scorsese delivered a special tribute to the work of the BFI National Archive, which celebrated its 75th birthday this year.

He said his career “owed British cinema a great debt”, going on to praise the BFI National Film Archive for its renovation and restoration work: “Since the 1950s for myself and so many other aspiring filmmakers the BFI has been the example to the world of how to preserve, recognize and respect film as an art form. For us in America it was the model film institute. We knew it was what every country should strive for.”

Other guests present at the ceremony, which was hosted by UK TV presenter Sue Perkins, included Greg Dyke, John Hurt, Richard Ayoade and Duncan Kenworthy.