One World Festival Awards 2016
The One World festival in Prague, number 18, will have its award ceremony on Wednesday; the winners, however, have already been announced. I mention, via the press release of today, the winners of the main competition, for the whole list, please go to the website:
The Grand Jury conferred awards for Best Film and Best Director, selecting from among 12 documentaries in the Main Competition category.
The award for Best Film went to “A Syrian Love Story” by British director Sean McAllister (UK / 2015 / 75 min.), who attended One World together with Raghda Hassan, a protagonist in the film. Three years ago the festival presented McAllister’s documentary The Reluctant Revolutionary.
“ The jury was impressed by the radical approach the director has chosen in the storytelling and by the braveness of the protagonists who allow the audience to experience an intimate story bringing out the human factor and an honest picture of a family in crisis amidst the political larger one,” the jury said in a statement.
The award for Best Director went to Zhao Liang, the Chinese director of “Behemoth” (France, China / 2015 / 90 min.), which is one of the most visually interesting films in this year’s festival.
“Liang Zhao is able to creatively craft a complex beautiful yet devastating image, mirroring the dialectic of the concrete to the basic values where he advocates for the fragile human and environmental state of our world. A director who manages with artistic precession and outstanding imagery to paint a loud and clear statement against violations caused by greed and illusions,” the jury said in its decision.
The Grand Jury consisted of: Polish documentary filmmaker Hanna Polak, Swiss director Eric Bergkraut, Syrian independent documentary filmmaker and co-founder of the Berlin-based non-profit association DOX BOX Diana El Jeiroudi, director of the ZeLIG School for Documentary, Television and New Media in Bolzano Heidi Gronauer, and Czech documentary filmmaker Bohdan Bláhovec.
