Krakow Film Festival Awards
Last night the award ceremony was held at the 56th Krakow Film Festival. Projects in development, participating in the impressive Industry section, were honored and supported, and there were decisions made by juries in the many festival sections. I saw the films in the International Documentary Competition so I will limit myself to comment on that – a full list of prize winners can be found on the website of the festival.
The jury for the Documentary Competition chose to give the Golden Horn to the director of the best film, Zosya Rodkevich for the film “My Friend Boris Nemtsov”, a popular and – allow me to say that – political correct decision. The Silver Horn for best medium length went to Massimo Coppola for the charming “Romeo and Juliet” and the one for the best feature-length documentary film to Canadian Pier-Luc Latulippe and Martin Fournier for the film “Manor”.
I was part of a 6 person critic’s panel that gave marks to the 19 films in this competition – published in the festival newspaper. I had “Manor” as one of the 4 I gave top points, whereas the two films that were number 1 and 2 on the critics list, both original and innovative in their cinematic language, Polish Piotr Stasik’s “21 x New York” and Brazilian “Curumim” by Marcos Prado were surprisingly not on the list of the jury. Stasik’s film with top points from all 6 critics! A great film, if he is disappointed, it is understandable.
The fourth one of my favourtites, Wojciech Kasperski’s “Icon” received the Fipresci prize, and was awarded as the best film in the National Polish Documentary Competition, plus it was recognized for its editing, for raising social awareness and for its cinematography.
The Award for the best cinematography funded by the HBO Polska went to Lithuanian Kristina Sereikaitė for the film “Dead Ears”, directed by Linas Mikuta.
And another partly Lithuanian film “I’m Not from Here” by Chilean Maite Alberti and Lithuanian Giedre Zickyte got the Prix EFA Krakow 2016 as best short film and qualifies therefore to the European Film Award.
One small consolation for the best film – according to me – Best producer in the National Polish Competition was Agnieszka Wasiak, Lava Film for her work on “21 x New York”.