Rainer Sarnet’s dark folklore fairytale November received the €10,000 Golden Lily award for best film at goEast’s closing ceremony in Wiesbaden, Germany on Tuesday (24 April).
The International Jury headed by Golden Bear winner Ildikó Enyedi praised the Estonian filmmaker’s third feature ”for the powerful vision, the true poetry, the free humour” as well as “the courage of the producer [Katrin Kissa] to fight for this vision.”
Produced by Homeless Bob Production, November is handled internationally by the UK-based sales company One Eyed Films.
Meanwhile, the City of Wiesbaden’s Best Director Award went to Hungarian documentary filmmaker Bernadett Tuza-Ritter for her feature-length debut A Woman Captured “for the bravery of the minimalist approach and for directing in a tender and patient way not only the film, but also the life of the protagonist.”
The Hungarian-German co-production between Eclipse Film and Corso Film is being sold internationally by Canada’s Syndicado.
In addition, Serbia’s Mila Turajlic’s The Other Side Of Everything took home the Federal Foreign Office’s award for cultural diversity, and the jury gave a Special Mention to Georgian-born Levan Gabridze’s third feature film and first animated documentary Rezo.
Other awards at goEast’s 18th edition included the FIPRESCI prizes to Czech filmmaker Bohdan Slama’s Ice Mother and Bernadett Tuza-Ritter’s A Woman Captured.
This year’s edition of the festival on Central and Eastern European cinema was the first one under the new festival director Heleen Gerritsen.
The programme, which also reflected the new director’s background in documentaries, included a portrait of the Russian director Boris Khlebnikov, a symposium on Baltic cinema and a retrospective dedicated to the Prague Spring of 1968 as well as the East-West Talent Lab for 30 young filmmakers from Central and Eastern Europe and the Rhine-Main region.
Plzen’s Golden Kingfisher goes to The Line
The 31st edition of the Finale Plzen annual showcase of Czech and Slovak film also came to a close on Tuesday evening with the awards ceremony in the historical West Bohemian town which is also home to the world famous Pils beer.
An international jury headed up by Polish director Tomasz Wasilewski and including Norwegian distributor Frank L. Stavik, German producer Alexander Ris and UK film critic and festival programmer Neil Young presented the Golden Kingfisher for the best feature live action or animated film to Slovak director Peter Bebjak’s crime thriller The Line which is handled internationally by UK sales outfit Film Republic
Accepting the award at Depo2015, the film’s team noted that The Line has only been second to Avatar in the number of admissions posted in Slovakia for films released in its cinemas over the past 25 years.
Actor Andrej Hryc said on stage that it was “sad” that Slovak films - including this one - were not receiving support from the Czech Film Fund (The Line, which won the best director award in Karlovy Vary last year, had been made as a co-production with Ukraine).
Bebjak also picked up the Golden Kingfisher and Student Jury awards for the best non-serial TVproject and internet production for Justice, while Lukás Kokes and Klára Tasovská’s Nothing Like Before was presented with the Golden Kingfisher sculpture for best documentary.
Industry Days
Finale Plzen’s Industry Days invited programmers from such festivals as New Horizons, London, Gothenburg, Cottbus, Thessaloniki, Venice Karlovy Vary, and Tallinn as well as sales agents and producers to attend the third edition of the Czech Film Springboard organised with the Czech Film Fund and Czech Film Center.
The four-day event showcased seven new film projects and five works in progress, including Slovenian-born filmmaker Olmo Omerzu’s latest feature Winter Flies which had been presented as a project in development at the first Czech Film Springboard in 2016.
Winter Flies is Omerzu’s third collaboration with Jirí Konecny’s Endorfilm and is structured as a co-production with Slovenia’s Cvinger Film, Poland’s Koskino, and Slovakia’s Punkchart Films.
In addition, French producer Guillaume de Seille (Arizona Productions) and Veronika Finková (Film & Roll) showed footage of Chilean director Alejandro Fernández Almendras’s The Play which is being co-produced with Chile’s Jirafa and financing from South Korea’s Jeonju International Film Festival.
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