My Stolen Planet by Farahnaz Sharifi won the €12,000 Golden Alexander prize of the international competition of the 26th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (TIDF), which closed on March 17.
The intimate family portrait is a Germany-Iran co-production and made its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Panorama programme last month.
At TIDF, it also won the Fipresci award and a place in the pre-selection shortlist for the best documentary Osar. France’s CAT&Docs is handling international sales.
Lidia Duda’s Forest, won the €5,000 international competition special jury prize, the Silver Alexander. The Poland-Czech Republic co-production, also about a family, this time one living off-grid but faced with global forces that bring injustice and suffering to their doorstep. Germany’s Rise and Shine has international rights.
A special mention was given to Greek director Elina Psykou’s Stray Bodies, about women’s physical and ethical rights, that is being sold by Israel-based Cinephil.
In the Newcomers section, Roggier Kappers’ Dutch title Glass, My Unfulffiled Life took the Golden Alexander and €10,000 with the special jury prize, the Silver Alexander and €4,000 going to the Danish-Swedish title Fighting Demons With Dragons by Camilla Magid.
Winners in the Film Forward competition included Lola Arias’ Argentinian title Reas, which won the Golden Alexander and €6,000 plus the Mermaid award to the best LGBTQI+ themed film in the festival.
US title Desire Lines by Jules Rosskam was awarded the Silver Alexander and €3,000. Greek title Avant Drag by Fil ieropoulos was given a special mention.
A total of €58,000 was awarded across 12 prizes, with a further €18,000 was given to the Agora industry winners on March 14.
Standing out among the tributes and homages was the Citizen Queer panorama of 33 LGBTQI+-themed documentary films, as well as tributes to Maria Callas on the 100th anniversary of her birth and Greek choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou.
The festival presented two Golden Alexanders to Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba whose animated documentary They Shot the Piano Player opened the festival, and his Greek colleague Panayotis Evangelidis.
Among the record number of Greek documentaries that screened at the festival were Vania Turner’s Tack, awarded the Fipresci trophy for a Greek film, Marianna Economou’s Unclaimed and Dimitris Indares’ Lenaki, The Curse Of Fear.
The festival was held amid a turbulent socio-political context in the Greek city of Thessaloniki. A number of mainly young local homophobic and ultrareligious groups protested the recently-passed same-sex marriage law. They besieged the festival’s main venue to protest the screening of a number of films and Stefanos Kasselakis, the openly gay main opposition leader, who attended the screenings.
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