11. October 2015

And the Awards Go To...

LET'S CEE WINNERS 2015
Update: October, 13

LET'S CEE GEWINNER 2015

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Press Release:
http://www.letsceefilmfestival.com/pressemitteilungen-detail-en/items/360.html

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Feature Film Competition
Jury: Jan Cvitkovič, Peter Roehsler, Ursula Wolschlager & Katahrina Wöppermann

Feature Film Competition
Best Film
You Carry Me
Director: Ivona Juka

Jury: In a strong local setting and in highly unusual and original scenes, the filmmaker draws complex, stubborn and idiosyncratic characters. They are the modern heroines of three stories reflecting father-daughter relationships in very different social settings. Against all dramaturgical principals, the filmmaker unfolds the stories in a quiet yet convincing way to interweave them finally to something way bigger than the sum of all parts: LIFE as something huge.

Feature Film Competition
Honorable Mention
The Fool
Director: Yury Bykov

Jury: For this sharp and magnificently acted deception of a small Russian town our first special mention goes to Yury Bykov's THE FOOL.

Feature Film Competition
Honorable Mention
Body
Director: Małgorzata Szumowska

Jury: With unusual characters, set into lively cinematic moments and accompanied by witty situational humour, the filmmaker depicts a wide variety of elements around the different meanings of the title word: BODY by Małgorzata Szumowska.

Documentary Competition
Best Film
The Queen of Silence
Director: Agnieszka Zwiefka

Jury: We want to honour the director for finding the perfect balance. We loved the way she tells her story. It made us laugh and cry, and gave us the possibility to see through the eyes of her protagonist. We were impressed by the way she managed to show the world from a girl’s point of view. The director gets very close to her protagonist and always stays at eye level with her. She also focuses so clearly on Denise’s vitality and her joy of life, that there is never any paternalistic pity. Seeing the film, we also felt the director’s determination to come close to the Roma society and - in contrary to many other films - clearly avoid showing them as victims.

Documentary Competition
Honorable Mention
Logbook Serbistan
Director: Želimir Žilnik

Jury: Želimir Žilnik’s film is in many parts - especially when it comes to camera cut - raw and unpolished. However, exactly this courage and commitment to situations which are hard to film, and situations he has no control over, impressed us.  He also managed to find very exciting protagonists and follow them on their path, while concentrating on telling the story with images that assume the ability of the viewers to interpret them.

Documentary Competition
Honorable Mention
The Invisible City
Director: Viestur Kairish

Jury: INVISIBLE CITY deserves the special mention for showing in a poetic and poignant way looking for harmony and happiness and also for of creating subversive political statement about Ukrainian live where on this days the most peaceful and save place to live seems to be Chernobyl area.

Short Film Competition
Jury: Suzanne Ballantyne, Vadym Shapran, Andreas Ungerböck

Short Film Competition
Best Film
The Same Blood
Director: Mitry Semenov-Aleinikov

Jury: For the powerful depiction of a political struggle and how it affects a family and its relationships.

Short Film Competition
Honorable Mention
The Translator
Director: Emre Kayis

Short Film Competition
Honorable Mention
Life With Herman H. Rot
Director: Chintis Lundgren

Short Film Competition
Honorable Mention
Bright Future My Love
Director: Marko Zunic

Promising Debuts
Jury: Dragan Bjelogrlić, Kurt Ockermüller, Heideline Pfaffenbichler

Promising Debuts
Best Film
For Some Inexplicable Reason
Director: Gábor Reisz

Jury: This funny and at same time poetic and inventive tragicomedy wins the audience over with its unconventional, fanciful story and extraordinary dialogues. The story ironically and intelligently treats the typical Hungarian patriotic behaviour of philistines, while offering an amusing mixture of reality and surreality. This debut film – a specific kind of love story with a positive open ending – deserves our honest recognition also due to its innovative visual language and especially due to the subtle representation of inner states of the “soul of an artist in the real world”, which is very hard to express.

Promising Debuts
Honorable Mention
Down The River
Director: Asif Rustamov

Jury: The conventionally narrated psychodrama captivates from the very beginning. Put into the ambience of rowing as a sport, which acts as a metaphor for hard discipline, pressure and constraint, the film gives the viewer a dense insight into the midlife crisis of the protagonist, into his desperate family life and his progressing mental transformation. Under subtle influence of film music and amazing symbolic images - like the ones of a threatening inhuman technology and water as metaphors of life and death – this film becomes a touching classic tragedy with a small “happy end”. The acting performance of Namiq Aghayev as Ali is outstanding.

Promising Debuts
Honorable Mention
Modris
Director: Juris Kursietis

Jury: This impressive socially criticizing melodrama built around the 17 years old Modris addicted to gambling, touches us through its uncomplicated storytelling, consistent and coherent (smartphone)camera and its dense atmosphere. MODRIS communicates a convincing “slice-of-life” impression and the film is actually based on an authentic story. This film is characterized by the outstanding acting performance of the impressive non-professional lead actor Kristen Piksa.

Audience Award
Aferim!
Director: Radu Jude

Best Actress in a Competition Film
Fatemeh Motamed-Arya for Nabat

LET'S CEE Curator Tomasz Raczek: The film shows the fate of a poor peasant woman against the background of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the beginning of the 1990s. But at the same time, it is a universal parable of all mothers during times of war. What seems to be set as a rational village chronicle by director Elchin Musaoglu soon turns out to be interfused with poetical dream images and nature symbolism, impressively visualising Nabat’s inner and outer world. It is the depressingly beautiful melancholia that distinguishes this film, derived from the exceptional play of the Iranian actress Fatemeh Motamed-Arya.

Lifetime Achievement Award 2015
Želimir Žilnik

LET'S CEE Directors: The Serbian Director and Producer has been making movies for 45 years, both full-length and shorts, feature films as well as documentaries, and of course docu-dramas, a genre he co-founded. Over the years he has built an enviable reputation as a social critic, intellectual, and of course as a film maker.