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LET'S CEE Film Festival
The Urania statuettes for best films go to Una Gunjak and THE CHICKEN in the Short Film Competition, Vitaly Mansky and PIPELINE in the Documentary Film Competition and last not least to Ilmar Raag and I WON'T COME BACK in the Feature Film Competition. Congratulations!
Jury FEATURE FILM COMPETITION
Gunther Baumann
Gabriele Kranzelbinder
Kurt Ockermüller
Let’s start with honorable mentions:
WHITE GOD
The jury appreciates the impressive presentation and the visually marvellous realization of the parable about inhumanity, where dogs are the symbol for the oppressed and gain all the audience’s sympathies.
MONUMENT TO MICHAEL JACKSON
convinces the jury with a Serbian picaresque story, where a serious topic is transformed by the plot’s orginiality and the sensitive performance of the ensamble into a great pleasure to watch.
I WON'T COME BACK
But the main prize in this category honours a road movie about the discovery of love. The movie touches by means of the admirable performance of two young actresses and the story, which does not lose its hope and optimism despite sometimes quite adverse and cruel conditions. The Urania Award 2014 for the best feature film goes to the Estonian director Ilmar Raag for his international coproduction I WON'T COME BACK.
Jury DOCUMENTARY FILM COMPETITION
Anna Franklin
Andreas Horvath
Jerzy Palacz
The jury decided to give special mentions to two films:
HAPPILY EVER AFTER
by Tatjana Božić from Croatia for its revealing and very personal look at the filmmaker's personal life;
PELICAN IN THE DESERT
by Viesturs Kairiss from Latvia for its poetic visual imagery and meditative pace;
PIPELINE
The main award 2014 in the category Best Documentary goes to PIPELINE by Vitaly Mansky. The jury decided to award the main prize to a film that is elegantly and flawlessly shot and edited and conveys profound and universal truths, with empathy towards his subjects. The film explores its theme in a purely filmic way that goes beyond anything that could have been stated in words alone.
Jury SHORT FILM COMPETITION
Clemens Aap Lindenberg
Robert Menasse
Eliane Umuhire
Nastya Velskaya
The quality of this year’s competition was so high that actually each short film would deserve a special mention. Anyway, the jury decided to mention four honourable films:
PANDAS (director: Matúš Vizár)
THE EXECUTION (director: Petra Szöcs)
KOSHERLAND (Director: Pyotr Magnus Nedov)
8 MONTHS (Director: Hüseyin Aydın Gürsoy)
The main prize of the LET’S CEE Film Festival in the category ‘best short film’ goes to THE CHICKEN (Director: Una Gunjak):
This movie functions like a wondrous kaleidoscope: we notice a pattern, and after a quick turn there suddenly is a new pattern, and again, after another turn the same small elements construct a new pattern in their new constellation. These are patterns of human behavior and at the same time patterns of the audiences’ expectations. We see a family without a man. Maybe he is at work. No, he’s not at work, he is in the war. The daughter gets a chicken as a present. It shall be slaughtered and eaten. That’s clear. No, the girl wants to save the chicken’s life. Now we expect her to succeed. Where is the war? Is it far? And here the life wins? No, the war is in front of the door step. On the streets people get slaughtered, and we expect or we even hope that the chicken survives and won’t be slaughtered. We fall for the pattern: the world is inhuman, but the beauty of a child’s innocence preserves the small rest of humanity. There is no innocence: the human being is the animal that slaughters. Humanity is relative: it’s a game of illusions, we use to illustrate the struggle for survival.
The direction, the development of the plot, the art of the cast, the camera work and cut are so perfect that the jury unanimously decided to nominate the movie THE CHICKEN for the prize of the best short film.
