18/09/2015 - Peter Strickland’s film and Martin Štrba’s documentary have taken the top prizes at the gathering

Director Peter Strickland (left) receiving his award

The Cinematik Film Festival (10-15 September) concluded its tenth edition in the Slovakian spa town of Piešťany by handing out its awards. The Meeting Point Europe competition boasted a powerful line-up curated by European film critics. Yorgos Lanthimos’ witty, dystopian, absurdist sci-fi comedy The Lobster [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Yorgos Lanthimos
film profile] was competing for the main award alongside Bruno Dumont’s comedy miniseries L´il Quinquin [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Ulrich Seidl’s documentary cellar tour In the Basement [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Wim Wenders’ latest documentary The Salt of the Earth [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Joshua Oppenheimer’s award-festooned The Look of Silence [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. Surprisingly, Peter Strickland netted the top prize for his lightly erotic and surreal The Duke of Burgundy [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], which had already been screened in Slovakian cinemas in May. The award was handed directly to the director, who was present at the festival.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

In another competition section focused solely on domestic feature-length documentaries, the jury decided to hand the Cinematik.doc Award to Slovakian director and cameraman Martin Štrba for his exploration of the Slovak New Wave in photography, wave vs shore. Ladislav Kaboš’ time-lapse documentary Colours of the Sand screened as a premiere; the movie, which follows the life story of Ľuba El Malahegová, who left Slovakia for Libya, where she worked as a nurse during the war, snagged the Award of the Mayor of Piešťany. In a public vote conducted throughout the festival, visitors voted Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan’s film Mommy as the recipient of the Audience Award. Mommy was already distributed in Slovakian territory at the beginning of this year by the Association of Slovak Film Clubs.

The tenth edition of the Cinematik Film Festival featured over 160 films and three premieres of domestic productions, and also spotlighted Catalan cinema, with a special retrospective dedicated to Jaime Rosales, who arrived at the gathering to pick up the Respect Award. Rosales was also given a carte blanche by the organisers, allowing him to pick four films that were then screened during the festival. His choices were Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood, Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika, Viridiana by Luis Buñuel and Pickpocket by one of his influences, Robert Bresson.