Policeman wins Best Film Award at BAFICI

Although two out of the five winners in the International competition came from Argentina - Martín Piroyansky picked up the Best Actor prize for his coming-of-age role in Vampire Spider (Laaraña Vampiro), while Maximiliano Schonfeld’s Germania was awarded the Bafici Jury’s Special Prize – it was Israeli films that dominated the big awards, with Policeman (Hashoter) named Best Film and its director Nadav Lapid winning the Best Director Award.

The Best Actress prize went to Zoé Heran for Tomboy (France, 2011).

Meanwhile, Papirosen, directed by Gastón Solnicki, who took home a Bafici prize in 2008 for his debut feature Süden, picked up the Best Film Award in the Argentina competition.

350,000 people attended the festival, a rise of 15% on 2011, with 230,000 cinema tickets sold across the 12-days. 450 films were screened during the festival.

Culture Secretary for Buenos Aires city, Hernán Lombardi, who hosted the awards ceremony alongside Bafici director Sergio Wolf, notching up his fifth year in that role, said of this year’s edition: “It is quality and originality that attracts so many people. And what’s so interesting about this duality between quality and quantity is that it has always been Bafici’s trademark.”