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Summer Festivals - Paris Cinéma
International award winners 2009
Article published on the 2009-07-14 Latest update 2009-07-14 17:53 TU
President of the Paris Cinema Festival, Charlotte Rampling, at the competition award ceremony in Paris, 13 July 2009.
(photo: Alexia Villard)
Three feature films and three short films were awarded with professional, audience and student prizes at the Paris Cinema International Festival in Paris on Monday night. The Jury Award was won by a film from Georgia and Kazakhstan, called The Other Bank, and directed by George Ovashvili.
The Audience Award went to La Nana, a Chilean film directed by Sebastian Silva, and the Prix de l'Avenir (The Future Award), chosen by students, went to Vegas: Based on a True Story, by Amir Naderi from the United States. The three short film winners were Diplomacy by Jon Goldman (US), Vostock by Jan Anderson (France) and L'autre monde, by Romain Delange, France.
In the fiction and documentary section, 12 films were in the running for the three prizes in 2009. The Jury Award, the professional prize in the feature section, was won by The Other Bank (L'Autre Rive) which shows, through the eyes of a child separated from his father in Abkhazia, the violence and hatred that permeate war and its aftermath. It was made this year by George Ovashvili.
Still from La Nana by Chilean director Sebastian Silva, 2009
(Credit: ASC Distribution)
The Audience voted for another film, La Nana, a Chilean film, which tells the story of a maid who has held her job for 20 years.
When a younger woman arrives and casts her shadow, the long-established maid takes umbrage. Sebastian Silva lets in moments of light in a tense scenario.
Still from Vegas: Based on a True Story, Amir Naderi, 2008
(Rights reserved)
Vegas: Based on a True Story hooked the student jury, under the supervision of Franco-British actress Charlotte Rampling. Directed by US filmmaker Amir Naderi, orginally from Iran, it won the Prix de L'Avenir.
Set in suburban Las Vegas, home of slot-machines, gaming tables and where fortunes are made and broken, it broaches an often-found obsession with money.Seventeen films were selected in the short film category. Diplomacy, which won the Audience Award, is shot on video and directed by Jon Goldman from the United States. In the space of nine minutes he creates a certain suspense as two language interpreters put a spin on the words uttered by politicians in a bid to prevent a diplomatic dispute.
A still from Vostok', a short film by Jan Andersen
(Photo: Jan Andersen)
The Emotion Award, sponsored by clothing firm, Kookaï was won by another French entry, called L'Autre Monde (The Other World), by Romain Delange.
Still from L'autre monde, by Romain Delange, 2008
(Photo: Nicolas Duchêne)
It's 27 minutes long, shot in Yugoslavia during the war in the 1990s and also in the north of France, in the Ardennes, and tells the tale of two young men who are setting out in life in 1995, but along very different paths.
Is it a coincidence that both in this and the short film category, films with the word "The Other..." won the Jury awards this year? The Jury's out on that one, so we'll have to wait and see what happens in the 8th Paris Cinema International Film Festival in 2010.
In the meantime, the film programme runs through, tonight, 14 July, with Turkish films, films for children, for fans of Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claudia Cardinale, Tsai Ming-liang, Naomi Kawase and Lluis Minarro, as well as sex comedies from Asia and golden oldies.
The closing session takes place at the Centquatre culture centre in the north of Paris, with a screening of Oyuki the Virgin from 1935 by Japan's Kenji Mizoguchi, against a musical background provided by Francis et ses Peintres and Japanese singers, Maia Barouh and Emiko Ota.
