18/11/2015 - Colombian drama Land and Shade and Iranian film Nahid are among the winners

César Augusto Acevedo's Land and Shade, which won two prizes at the festival

The Colombian drama written and directed by César Augusto Acevedo, Land and Shade [+see also:
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film profile], came out on top at the rebranded (read the news) 17th edition of the Bratislava International Film Festival. The Caméra d’Or winner from this year’s Cannes Film Festival netted two accolades in Slovakia’s capital: the top prize in the fiction feature competition for its “strong but simultaneously subdued portrayal of an apparently simple story” and the FIPRESCI Prize for “a composed, considered and precise riff on family as the last victim of capitalism, a parasite that destroys the very resources it depends upon”.

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Iranian filmmaker Ida Panahandeh took home the Best Director Award for her Un Certain Regard Promising Future Prize winner, Nahid, revolving around divorce, remarriage and child custody in Iran, while Navid Mohammadzadeh won the Best Actor Award for his character Ahmad, the ex-husband of the film’s protagonist, who was praised for his “complex, whole and believable portrait” by the jury. Actresses Niki Karimi and Sahar Ahmadpour shared the Best Actress Award for their “authentic” performances in the Iranian film Wednesday, May 9, while the movie was also given the Student Jury Award.

The winner in the documentary section turned out to be the French-Swiss-German co-production A German Youth [+see also:
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film profile] by Jean-Gabriel Périot, rewarded for its “unique archival research and clear aesthetic vision, which, in confrontation with politics, awakens the rebellious spirit of art”. Vladimir Tomić’s documentary Flotel Europa [+see also:
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film review
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interview: Marko Škop
film profile], was honoured with the Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award and will have a memorial tile embedded in the film walk of fame in front of the PO Hviezdoslav Theatre in Bratislava.

The Bratislava International Film Festival unspooled from 12-17 November.