The director Maya Da-Rin wins the Feature Film Grand Prize City of Lisbon with her film The Fever, a film that explores the pressures of a modern and urban lifestyle. The jury of the International Competition also awarded Victoria, by Isabelle Tollenaere, Liesbeth De Ceulaer and Sofie Benoot, with the Special Jury Award TVCine. The Allianz Award for Best Portuguese Feature Film was given to O Fim do Mundo, by Basil da Cunha, whilst the Award for Best Directing in a Portuguese Feature Film was given to A Metamorfose dos Pássaros, by Catarina Vasconcelos. All the while, the Dolce Gusto Award for Best Portuguese Short Film was awarded to Meine Leibe, by Clara Jost. And the FCSH/NOVA New Talent Award disclosed the “cinematic irreverence” of Bernardo and Afonso Rapazote, in Corte. The Short Film Grand Prize was awarded to Tendre, by Isabel Pagliai.
Awards 2020
FEATURE FILM INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION JURY
Caroline Maleville | Cristina Nord | Mamadou Ba
Feature Film Grand Prize City of Lisbon – 15.000 Euros
THE FEVER
Maya Da-Rin, Brazil / France / Germany, fic., 2019, 98’
“The jury for the international competition gives the main award to A FEBRE by director Maya Da-Rin. The film follows Justino (Regis Myrupu), a man in his late forties working as a guard in the port of Manaus, on the shores of the Amazon river. Justino is from an indigenous community somewhere deep in the forest, which he abandoned decades ago. His grown-up daughter is about to leave for Brasilia in order to study medicine. A strange fever befalls Justino upon hearing the news, and at the same time, an unidentified beast starts to haunt the neighbourhood he lives in. Maya Da-Rin observes the everyday life of the characters with patience and kindness. Her film shows a great sensitivity for the particular mix of cityscape, river and forest which is so characteristic of Manaus. It also clings to the characters’ perception of the world and embraces a perspective that exceeds Western rationality, however, the film is never at risk of creating a simplistic contrast of modernity versus tradition. Maya Da-Rin’s mise en scène might seem unobtrusive, in fact, it is extremely well crafted. The result is a nuanced and rich film and a highly accomplished exploration of the predicament indigenous people face in contemporary Brazil.”
TVCine Channels Special Award – Copyrights acquisition for Portugal
VICTORIA
Isabelle Tollenaere, Liesbeth De Ceulaer e Sofie Benoot, Belgium, doc., 2020, 71’
“Documentaries tend to capture a certain reality. With VICTORIA by Sofie Benoot, Liesbeth de Ceulaer and Isabelle Tollenaere, it’s different. There’s more. There’s dreams, thoughts, stories, and fantasies, there’s an exploration of an imaginary space: a turtle race, the beauty of water fountains in a dry land, black holes that lead to other galaxies, a past that may be somewhat shady, a future that might hold a promise. The film captures the everyday comings and goings of Lashay T. Warren, a young Black man from Los Angeles who has moved to California City, a huge, albeit decrepit place in the desert. At the same time, it immerses into Lashay’s ideas, dreams and reflections, renders them palpable, sharing authorship with him. While moving through the arid scenery, the film evokes the history of the European settlers in America in a casual manner, and it also alludes to film history with all its quests for a better life and its frontier mythology – and again, it does so in a very subtle fashion. The result is a rich and multilayered film, a perfect blend of humbleness, complexity and beauty.”
SHORT FILM INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION JURY
Joana Pimenta | Jorge Jácome | Nuno Rodrigues
Short Film Grand Prize – 4000 Euros
TENDRE
Isabel Pagliai, France, doc., 2020, 43′
“Somewhere, by a lake, we face the mysteriously violent world of adolescent desire. This film is full of words that create other images, and for a brief moment, three teenagers are the center of a world committed to their intimacy. A world that becomes close to us because the film shortens the distance between a formal rigor and a narrative in which each image hides the secret of a long proximity, of a place of understanding between the camera and the other, of the time of observation. This is a film full of life, which immerses us in the contradiction of affections, in which innocence and perversity are the two points on the map of a game in which the director risks, comes close, takes a stand.”
Best Animation Award – 500 Euros
THIS MEANS MORE
Nicolas Gourault, France, doc. / anim., 2019, 22’
“Through a hypnotic choreography between archival material and others of digital animation, the film departs from reports of a tragic event that transformed the history of football, to lead us to reflect on the transformations made in the architecture of stadiums and the way they contributed to the weakening of the community phenomenon within the British working class.”
Best Documentary Award – 500 Euros
DOUMA UNDERGROUND
Tim Alsiofi, Lebanon, doc., 2019, 11’
“Faced with an unthinkable situation of terror, many escape or surrender to simplistic considerations or to a journalistic summaries. The director of this film takes his post and uses the cinematographic possibilities of observation, the ability to anticipate a repetition, to maintain a shot when everyone runs, to find narratives that come from a melancholic familiarity with a place, to create a film that boldly proposes and shares an idea of cinema, a possible politics of image.”
Best Fiction Award – 500 Euros
SHĀNZHÀI SCREENS
Paul Heintz, France / China, doc., 2020, 23’
“A good fiction can be more than a “copy of the real”. The jury decided to give the Best Fiction Award to a film that is also a documentary. A creative and inventive portrait of an industry that questions the idea of originality and explores relationships between natural and artificial, east and west, analog and digital, simulation and simulacrum.”
NATIONAL COMPETITION JURY
Louise Rinaldi | Michael Wahrmann | Núria Cubas
Allianz Award for Best Portuguese Feature Film – 7500 Euros
O FIM DO MUNDO
Basil da Cunha, Portugal, fic., 2019, 107′
“These are dark and obscure times we live in. Apocalyptic feelings all around us. Light is not easy to find. A film about love and friendship that also raises a subtitle, but clear and direct finger of accusation to an unjust system. For its intimate and sincere, though cruel portrait of an effervescent society that is about to explode and burn us all. The best film award goes to O Fim Do Mundo by Basil da Cunha and his friends.”
Award for Best Directing in a Portuguese Feature Film – 1000 Euros
THE METAMORPHOSIS OF BIRDS
Catarina Vasconcelos, Portugal, doc. / fic., 2020, 101’
“For the very tender and moving way of dealing with paternal and maternal relationships, love and absence. For it’s creative way of inventing its own biography, playing with images and re-significating them for her own use and memory. For showing us that memory, is what we want it to be; A fiction based on true facts.”
Dolce Gusto Award for Best Portuguese Short Film – 2000 Euros
MEINE LIEBE
Clara Jost, Portugal, doc., 2020, 6’
“ ‘The whole world can be found in the corner of the street’, said Russian writer Tolstoy. Through a simple, but not simplistic precise and poetic essay, this film touches life with deep feelings. The banal death of a small tomato (tomatinho) in a corner of a room, shivered us, like no other shot did during this whole week.”
CORTE
Bernardo Rapazote e Afonso Rapazote, Portugal, fic., 2020, 28’
“The new talent award will be shared by two new talents who are very different from each other, but similar at the same time. Like in life, in their film, they are kids enjoying a game like serious adults. For the playful use of few narrative resources and for the promise of an irreverence cinema pulse, we give the New Talent Award to the Rapazote brothers for CORTE.”
BRAND NEW COMPETITION JURY
André Miguel Ferreira | Felipe Bragança | Selma Uamusse
The Yellow Color + Portugal Film Brand New Award – 2000 Euros in services + promotion and sales
CONTRAFOGO
Carolina Vieira, Portugal, doc., 2020, 10′
“Because it is a film that brings together in a sweet, humorous and delicately critical way, sensations that go through this tumultuous year of 2020, and that leaves in the air a feeling of well-being and reflection on life, on time, on family relationships and on the very meaning of cinema, the jury chose to receive the Brand New Award the film CONTRAFOGO directed by Carolina Vieira.”
Special Mention
NESTOR
João Gonzalez, Portugal, anim., 2019, 6’
“For its great technical achievement, musical and rhythm sense, and for its cinematic refined language, the jury would like to give a Special Mention to NESTOR, directed by João Gonzalez.”
SILVESTRE JURY
Paulo Cunha | Marta Lança | Pedro Borges | Alexandra Ramires | Filipe Raposo
Silvestre Award for Best Feature Film – 1500 Euros
EX-AEQUO
BURNING NIGHT
Eryk Rocha, Brazil / France / Argentina, fic., 2019, 98’
ALL THE DEAD ONES
Caetano Gotardo e Marco Dutra, Brazil / France, fic., 2020, 120’
“Celebrating the vitality of Brazilian cinema, at a time when it is gravely threatened, we award two films that stand out for addressing the historical, social and racial complexities of Brazil. We also commend the reflective character and the relevance of these films, against a current tendency to choke and reduce cinema to a culture of entertainment and alienation.”
Silvestre Award for Best Short Film – 1000 Euros
APPARITION
Ismaïl Bahri, Tunísia/ França, doc, fic. 2019, 3’
“Synthesis film about the filmic apparatus itself, where we are invited to look inside the images, in the projected plans and revealed by the hand that leads us and summons poetic images between the real and the imaginary. We see what the hands allow, we see what our knowledge allows.”
INDIEMUSIC JURY
Joana Barra Vaz | Jorge Ferraz | Pedro Azevedo
IndieMusic Award – 1000 Euros
EX-AEQUO
WHITE RIOT
Rubika Shah, United Kingdom, doc., 2019, 80’
KEYBOARD FANTASIES: THE BEVERLY GLENN – COPELAND STORY
Posy Dixon, United Kingdom, doc., 2019, 63’
“The jury unanimously decided to give the IndieMusic Award to “Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story” and “White Riot” in ex-aequo. Both are distinguished from other films in competition as cinematographic and documentary objects. In them, essential values prevail for a co-existence in democracy in its fullness. If, on the one hand, “White Riot” addresses the urgent need to combat racism, fascism and intolerance through social collectivity through music; on the other hand, “Keyboard Fantasies” shows us a full life, where the individual prevails serene, fighter and resilient, in union and social harmony, encouraging youth with their musical identity. Both films have the capacity to inspire us and, consequently, to transform.”
ÁRVORE DA VIDA JURY
Inês Gil | Helena Valentim | P. António Pedro Monteiro
Árvore da Vida Award for Best Portuguese Film – 2000 Euros
O FIM DO MUNDO
Basil da Cunha, Portugal, fic., 2019, 107′
“A deeply humanistic film, a reflexive path around the meaning and value of Life, in times when trends of contempt and exclusion towards the most fragile grow. The aesthetic care of the images, the dynamics of the edition and truly poetic performance of the actors, create a narrative in such an engaging way that it allows to follow the journey of people and communities, in their contradictions and inner aspirations, whose destiny shows a desire for spiritual growth.”
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL JURY
Ivo Canelas | Sandra Dias Pereira
Amnesty International Award – 1500 Euros
DOUMA UNDERGROUND
Tim Alsiofi, Lebanon, doc., 2019, 11’
“In twelve painful minutes we feel transported into a reality very distant from ours, reminding us of how important is to never stop recording, even when everything around us collapses. The courage of filming under this circumstances and the realistic, but also poetic way the director does it, deserves to be recognised.”
The Audience Awards – Feature Film Award, Short Film Award and IndieJúnior Audience Award – will be disclosed at the end of the festival.
The festival will continue until September 11th with additional sessions at Cinema Ideal, where award-winning film sessions will take place, and at the Cinemateca Portuguesa, with film screenings belonging to the retrospectives of Ousmane Sembène and the 50 Years of Forum Berlinale.