Bolivian director Kiro Russo is again awarded at IndieLisboa with Dark Skull, which wins the Feature Film Grand Prize City of Lisbon. The jury of the international competition also awarded Araby, by Affonso Uchôa and João Dumans, with the Special Jury Award TVCine & Series. The Allianz – Ingreme Award for Best Portuguese Feature Film was given to Silent Encounter by Miguel Clara Vasconcelos and the Ingreme Award for Best Portuguese Short Film was awarded to Mirage My Bros, by Diogo Baldaia. The Short Film Grand Prize was awarded to Wiezi/ Close Ties, by Zofia Kowalewska.
IndieLisboa 2017 Awards
Feature Film International Competition
Giona A. Nazzaro | Manuel Mozos | Paz Lázaro
Feature Film Grand Prize City of Lisbon – 15.000 Euros + 3000 Euros in Ingreme services
Viejo Calavera/Dark Skull, Kiro Russo (Bolivia, Qatar)
“A work of rigorous and dazzling brilliance. An accomplished portrait of loss and grief among the contradictions and transformations of the Bolivian mining industry. A film about the dignity and resilience of labour and the beauty of cinema. Viejo Calavera is the revelation of Kiro Russo, a major talent that has only just begun to surprise us with his unique vision and powerful gaze.”
Special Jury Award TVCine & Séries – Film Rights Acquisition for Portugal
Arábia/Araby, Affonso Uchôa, João Dumans (Brazil)
“A film like a lost folk song that comes back to life to stir up resistance and change. A film that focuses on the experience and legacy of the roots of the black working class in Brazil. A film that evokes the necessity and the inevitability of a revolution even though the directors are fully aware that man will never be released from the pain of labour. An insightful film that questions the ideology of neoliberalism but refuses to preach to the choir. The revolution never sleeps and neither do Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans.”
Short Film International Competition
Filipe Abranches | Katja Pratschke | Richard Raskin
Short Film Grand Prize – 4000 Euros + 2000 Euros in Ingreme services
Wiezi/Close Ties, Zofia Kowalewska (Poland)
“The film we have unanimously chosen for the Grand Prize is an affectionate and non-judgmental portrait of a couple with a long history of problems and their resolutions. The film’s production values and storytelling are superb and though the film is a very personal and intimate one, it’s appeal is universal. It also ends on a note of hope. The Grand Prize goes to Close Ties, directed by Zofia Kowalewska.”
Best Animation – Short Film (Sponsorship: Macau Tourism) – 500 Euros
489 Years, Hayoun Kwon (France)
“The film we have unanimously chosen for the Best Animation Film award is also a documentary film. The imaginary journey it offers the viewer is visually spectacular and the quality of its storytelling is outstanding. Only 11 minutes long, it keeps our eyes glued to the screen at every moment and leaves us with a memorable experience of a strange no-man’s-land. The award for Best Animation Film goes to 489 Years, directed by Hayoun Kwan.”
Best Documentary – Short Film (Sponsorship: Macau Tourism) – 500 Euros
The Hollow Coin, Frank Heath (USA)
“The winner of the Best Documentary award takes us through an increasingly tense plot filled with spies and surveillance systems. With the masterful use of voices without faces, a dynamic montage and through the careful use of cutting and inserts, this film takes the viewer through a complex web, constructed within the narrative. The award for Best Documentary film goes to The Hollow Coin, directed by Frank Heath.”
Best Fiction – Short Film (Sponsorship: Macau Tourism) – 500 Euros
Le film de l’été/The Summer Movie, Emmanuel Marre (France, Belgium)
“The film we chose for the Best Fiction award takes us to a set of restless non-places, public areas of transit. Two men are stuck in their problems in an inhabitable concreteness. The exceptionally nonchalant performance of the actors demonstrates the modern day struggle in an indifferent world. The film shows us a way out: through an open and innocent perspective of a child. The work goes extremely deep and at the same time it is bright and warm like a sunny afternoon. The award for Best Fiction film goes to Le film de l’été/The Summer Movie by Emmanuel Marre.”
National Competition Jury
Antoine Barraud | Maike Mia Höhne | Paulo Bertolín
Allianz – Ingreme Award for Best Portuguese Feature Film – 2500 Euros from Allianz + 3000 Euros in Ingreme services
Encontro Silencioso / Silent Meeting, Miguel Clara Vasconcelos (Portugal)
“The pleasure of mise-en-scène is probably the biggest pleasure of cinema. Any subject, any genre, any actor can be interesting but it all relies on mise-en-scène. This film is playful, inventive, from the first shot moving down from the sky to the fountain of alameda, to the sadistic games in the mud, to the sequences in the caves and underwater. Couple times in the film, it reaches a point when you feel that it could go just about anywhere from there. And this a rare feeling.”
Ingreme Award for Best Portuguese Short Film – 1500 Euros + 2000 Euros in Ingreme services
Miragem Meus Putos / Mirage My Bros, Diogo Baldaia (Portugal)
“An arresting flow of unexpected visuals and sounds, seamlessly orchestrated by the associative power and lyrical magic of editing. A sensuous and ironic reminder of the potential of cinema as a language beyond sheer narration.”
FCSH/Nova New Talent Award – Short Film – 1500 Euros
Flores, Jorge Jácome (Portugal)
“We don’t exactly know what goes on between the two main characters. It is never clear and that’s exactly what is beautiful about it. It’s very subtle, made only of little gestures. And when one of the two turns to the director towards the end and says he would like to see what was shot during the few days spent together, it’s an unexpected emotion that turns up. It’s very moving to understand that this young man himself needs the film to see how the relationship comes off on screen. To understand it himself. This is a breathtaking use of the power of cinema. The film receiving the Best New Talent Award is Flores.”
Walla Collective Award for Best Film in Brand New Section – 2000 Euros in Walla Collective post-production services
Os Corpos que Pensam / The Bodies That Think, Catherine Boutaud (France, Portugal)
“Normally a certain distance helps to approach a subject, it helps making a movie. What if there is no distance ? What if all distance is from one sister to the other? Looking towards her sister, the director turns round a calaidoskop of images and situations and makes us travel through years and years passing by. We discover the ups and downs of Anorexia ; later turning into Bulimia within this framework of an intimate open portrait. In the end two beautiful sisters stand next to each other and there our vista is open.”
IndieMusic Jury
Joana Sá | Mário Valente | Tó Trips
Indiemusic Schweppes Award – 1000 Euros
Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present, Tyler Hubby (EUA, UK)
“The film presents the still little-known artistic work of Tony Conrad, which stands out for its multidimentionality, experimentalism and pertinence in questioning of established institutions and authority. It is striking for its coherence and consistency through time and for encompassing various artistic forms, from which music and film/ cinema are major artistic expressions which intimate relate to another. Besides the artistic relevance of the content, which film director Tyler Hubby manages always to put on foreground, this documentary is singular for its subtle performative approach and its non-linear construction (shot in about a twenty-year time span).”
Árvore da Vida Jury
Inês Gil | Margarida Avillez Ataíde | Paulo Pires Alves
Árvore da Vida Award – 2000 Euros
Ex-aequo:
Antão, o Invisível/ Anthony The Invisible, Maya Kosa, Sergio da Costa (Switzerland, Portugal)
Num Globo de Neve/ On a Silver Globe , André Gil Mata (Portugal)
“The 2017 Árvore da Vida award is given to these two films, for their simple use of several elements; their disarming sincerity regarding the experiences and feelings presented to us; the importance they give to the words, by showing us that they allow us to “see” – and that seeing is difficult and involves effort; the attention they both reveal about a person’s dignity; the way they show us the importance of being selfless – in Antão, the Museum worker, who shows the way and helps people see and, in the case of On a Silver Globe, the grandmother’s presence-absence and the importance of her love, showing how personal life and social history intersect in a destroyed city like Sarajevo; and at last, these two films are rewarded for the the mystery and secrets which they manage to preserve and for the freedom which they give to the viewers, giving them a role in its construction.”
Amnesty International Jury
Fernanda Câncio | Filipa Santos | Joana Gorjão Henriques
Amnesty International Award – 1500 Euros
Find Fix Finish, Mila Zhluktenko, Sylvain Cruiziat (Germany)
“We know what drones are. We know that they are used to persecute, to watch, to kill. We know that someone operates them. There is nothing new about this, we have seen many movies about this. But Find Fix Finish manages, with extreme formal beauty, give us a new perspective: we’re put in the place of those who see, watch and kill but also in the place of those who are seen, watched and executed. The Jury decided therefore to hand the Amnesty International Award to Find Fix Finish.”
Universities Jury
Leonor Sousa | Rafael Afonso | Teresa Vieira
Universities Prize
El mar la mar, Joshua Bonnetta, J.P. Sniadecki (USA)
“Poem of the deafening silence. Verses of shadows, of life, of death.
A tragic ode to a non-place replete with traces and fragments of temporary or painfully permanent passages.
Visual and aural clues meticulously placed in the narrative path of this documentary record of an invisible reality – of nameless souls, of bodies without matter or place – which culminates in a nonlinear picture of the most absolute totality. The sublime representation of a timeless trauma, of extreme pertinence in the current socio-political context. For these reasons, we award El mar la mar, by J.P. Sniadecki and Joshua Bonetta.”
Schools Jury
Débora Mogueiro | Inês Proença | Teresa Oliveira
Schools Award
Le fol espoir/Wild Hope, Audrey Bauduin (France)
“For the beauty and simplicity of its narrative structure, for the pertinence of its theme, and, finally, for proving that, in order to make a quality film, one does not need particularly advanced means of production, we give this award to Le Fol Espoir / Wild Hope.”
Audience Award
Feature Film Audience Award – 2000 Euros
Venus, Lea Glob, Mette Carla Albrechtsen (Denmark, Norway)
Best Short Film Crocs Award – 1000 Euros
Written/Unwritten, Adrian Silisteanu (Romenia)
IndieJunior Schools DoctorGummy Award – 500 Euros
Bichinhos do Lixo/Litterbugs, Peter Staney-Ward (UK)
IndieJunior Families Trina Award – 500 Euros
O Trenó/The Sled, Olesya Shchukina (Rússia)