12/11/2012 - Swedish director Gabriela Pichler's feature debut, Eat Sleep Die, added the Grand Jury Award-New Auteurs to the collection, while two Danish films won audience prizes

Swedish director Gabriela Pichler's Eat Sleep Die [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: China Ahlander
interview: Gabriela Pichler
interview: Nermina Lukac
film profile] (photo) won the Grand Jury Award-New Auteurs at the AFI Fest, Los Angeles - the American Film Institute's annual celebration of international cinema, which ended last week (November 8), after screening 140 films from 28 countries.

"The sensitive portrait of a young woman fighting to keep her job and her dignity in the globalized economy, driven by an energetic performance from Nermina Lukac, is an extraordinary work accessible to many audiences," said the jury of Pichler's first feature, which the week before (November 3) shared the NDR top prize (and €12.500) for Best Film with Danish director Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
film profile] at the 54th Nordic Film Days in Lübeck, Germany.

Also scripted by Pichler, and with Lukac, Milan Dragišic, Peter Fält, Ružica Pichlerand and Jonathan Lampinen in the leads, Eat Sleep Die is the story of a 20-year-old unemployed girl in a small Swedish village, who wants her life to be more than 'eat sleep die', while trying to meet state demands that jobless should look for work all over the country. The film won the RaroVideo Audience Award in the Critics' Week at the Venice International Film Festival and was recently screened in the Swedish Parliament.

Danish director Nikolaj Arcel's A Royal Affair [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mikkel Boe Følsgaard
interview: Nikolaj Arcel
film profile] - Denmark's official candidate for the 2013 Academy Award as Best Foreign-Language Feature - received the Audience Award in the World Cinema section; Arcel's fourth movie was launched at this year's Berlinale to win two Silver Bears, for Best Original Screenplay (Arcel, Rasmus Heisterberg) and Best Actor (Mikkel Bo Følsgaard). Danish director Tobias Lindholm's piracy thriller, A Hijacking [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tobias Lindholm
film profile], was given the Audience Award for New Auteurs.