“To Hold a Mountain,” a documentary from directing duo Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić about sisterhood and solitude within the Montenegrin highlands, received the Grand Prix at Millennium Docs Against Gravity throughout an award ceremony in Warsaw on Thursday.
The movie, which received the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance earlier this 12 months, was praised by the jury as “a nuanced portrayal of sisterhood, adolescence and the profound, generative role that nature and family hold in shaping who we are.” Selection‘s Murtada Elfadl described it as “an emotionally shattering meditation on grief and perseverance.”
“The film takes us into a magical world — a chosen solitude shared between an aunt and her niece, redrawing for us the beauty of family bonds within an enchanting natural landscape and rural tradition filled with love and patience,” stated the jury. “The same patience is shown by the filmmakers themselves, as they quietly observed and captured every subtle detail of a story that speaks to the reunion of humanity with nature.”
Twelve movies competed for the Grand Prix – Financial institution Millennium Award on the twenty third Millennium Docs Towards Gravity, which wraps in Warsaw and 6 different Polish cities Might 17. The jury was comprised of Oscar-nominated Syrian filmmaker Talal Derki (“Of Fathers and Sons”), Danish cinematographer and director Lea Glob (“Olmo and the Seagull”) and Osar-nominated producer Jessica Hargrave (“Come See Me in the Good Light”). The pageant will proceed on-line from Might 19 – June 1.
A particular point out in the primary competitors was awarded to “A Fox Under a Pink Moon,” the IDFA-winning documentary from administrators Mehrdad Oskouei and Soraya Akhlaghi, which scooped two different prizes Thursday evening, together with the Amnesty Worldwide Poland Award and the FIPRESCI Award, offered by the Worldwide Federation of Movie Critics (FIPRESCI) at Millennium Docs for the primary time.
Different awards from the primary competitors included the prize for finest cinematography, which went to “Closure,” from Polish filmmaker and cinematographer Michał Marczak. The award for finest modifying went to “Time and Water,” from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sara Dosa (“Fire of Love”).
The pageant’s award for finest Polish movie went to “Candidates of Death,” director Maciej Cuske’s decade-long portrait of a father, his son and two younger mates making an newbie horror movie. A particular point out went to administrators Alisa Kovalenko and Marysia Nikitiuk’s “Traces,” a strong portrayal of Ukrainian girls who refuse to stay silent after surviving sexual assault throughout the struggle with Russia. The movie additionally received the Smakjam Award for Greatest Manufacturing within the Polish competitors.
With Millennium Docs concurrently unspooling throughout seven Polish cities, a number of awards have been additionally handed out on the pageant’s satellite tv for pc venues. “Mariinka,” Belgian filmmaker Pieter-Jan de Pue’s CPH:DOX-opening documentary about younger lives shattered by the struggle in Ukraine, received the Mayor of Gdynia Award and the Metropolis of Poznań Freedom Award. The ART.DOC Award, offered within the metropolis of Bydgoszcz, went to Greek director Lucas Paleocrassas’ “Bugboy,” a delicate portrayal of youth.
“Fiume o Morte!” received the first-ever FIPRESCI Documentary Grand Prix.
Courtesy of IFFR
Commenting on this 12 months’s version, pageant director Artur Liebhart stated it “has again been a joy of celebrating documentary film’s genre in all varieties of its forms.”
“We have significantly enlarged activities for the industry this year, giving new opportunities to develop film projects at and with our festival. Over 200 filmmakers and other industry professionals have seen sold-out screenings rooms,” stated Leibhart. “We have lifted up the status of a documentary film in social-cultural perception to the level unprecedented in most other countries.”
Earlier within the week, on the pageant’s opening ceremony, FIPRESCI launched the Documentary Grand Prix for finest documentary movie of the 12 months, which was chosen by means of a vote by the critics group’s members. That award went to “Fiume o Morte!,” from Croatian filmmaker Igor Bezinović, whose Rotterdam-winning docufiction wittily combines archival footage and historic reenactments to revisit the 1919 occupation of the politically disputed metropolis of Fiume by Italian fascists.
Throughout a Q&A after a particular screening of the movie in Warsaw, Bezinović — a local of the modern-day Fiume, now known as Rijeka — described “Fiume o Morte!” as a cinematic “reappropriation of history.” Using a forged of non-professional locals, the movie playfully interrogates the brutal however bungled occupation whereas additionally permitting its actors — a lot of whom are descendants of the fascists’ victims — to reinterpret and reclaim a chapter of their metropolis’s previous. It was a method for them, stated Bezinović, to take “revenge through storytelling and art.”
The facility and chance of documentary filmmaking was a theme all through the week. On the opening ceremony, pageant creative director Karol Piekarczyk took a none-too-subtle jab at German filmmaker Wim Wenders and the manifold controversies that swirled round this 12 months’s Berlin Movie Pageant, the place jury president Wenders insisted that filmmakers ought to “stay out of politics.”
“I’m not going to take issue with the person that said it, but with the sentiment,” stated Piekarczyk. “I don’t know since when basic human rights have become political. We didn’t make them political. I think there is a deep misunderstanding about how filmmakers work, especially documentary filmmakers.”
“Traces” received the Panorama Viewers Award in Berlin.
Courtesy of Millennium Docs Towards Gravity
Piekarczyk referenced the Ukrainian filmmaker Kovalenko, whose “Traces” — which received the Panorama Viewers Award at this 12 months’s Berlinale — is predicated on the director’s experiences as a survivor of sexual violence and follows six Ukrainian girls making an attempt to remodel their trauma into collective company and hope.
“Alisa didn’t make her film because she had this list and she just figured how she’s going to make a film,” Piekarczyksaid. “She made it because it’s a personal story, but it’s a story that people have to hear. It’s a story about how sexual violence is treated like a weapon.”
It was Kovalenko who supplied one of many week’s extra stirring moments throughout a panel dialogue about documentary movie as an act of resilience. The director recounted her personal expertise as a captive of Russian forces, who’ve systematically used sexual violence and different types of torture in opposition to Ukrainian girls.
It took two years for Kovalenko to talk publicly about her captivity and torture. In the end, nevertheless, she got here to imagine that she “had no choice” however to make use of her platform as a documentary filmmaker to share the tales of different survivors.
“From the first meeting of our community, we talked a lot about documentary film as a tool of advocacy, to fight for justice, to amplify the voices of survivors, to document war crimes,” she stated.
“Culture has become a battlefield. Cinema has become our weapon against the aggressor,” she continued. “After the [full-scale Russian] invasion, I can’t think about cinema as art. It’s about your responsibility as an artist. We’re all becoming a resistance, to make the world better.”
