Russian director Mikhail Kalatozishvili's drama Wild Field has taken the best film award at the Estoril film festival in Portugal.

The Studio Barmalei production Wild Field focuses on the life of a doctor struggling to care for a small farming community, which is trying to fight off some outlaws, set against the sweeping plains of Kazakhstan's steppes.

'[Wild Field] caught the jury's eye for its intimate and expansive beauty, [balanced] between the traditions of the classic Russian cinema and modernity,' the festival announced.

  • The Special Jury Prize was shared by Ruben Ostlund's Swedish drama Involuntary, which screened at Cannes earlier this year, and Adrian Sitaru's Romanian film Hooked, which premiered at Venice.
  • The Cine-Europa prize went to another Russian film-maker, Bakur Bakuradze's criminal drama Shultes.

The festival's jury was comprised of J.M. Coetzee, Cristina Iglesias, Paul Auster, Juliao Sarmento and Catherine Deneuve.

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