Gonzalon Arijon's Stranded (France) has won the VPRO Joris Ivens award, the top prize at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

The award comes with a cash prize of Euros 12,500.

The film, about the survival story of the Uruguyan rugby team after a plane crash high in the Andes, was selected earlier this week for the World Documentary Competition in Sundance next January.

The other nominees were Yung Chang's Up The Yangtze and Carlos Bosch's Septembers.

The Special Jury Award went to UK director Kim Longinotto's Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go.

To See If I'm Smiling (Israel) by Tamar Yarom won both the Silver Wolf and the Volkskrant Audience Award. The film is about young women in the Israeli army.

The Silver Cub award for shoter documentaries went to The Tailor (Spain) by Oscar Perez.

The First Appearance award went to End Of The Rainbow (France/Australia) directed by Robert Nugent.

In other prizes, the IDFA Student Award went to Elina Hirvonen for Paradise - Three Journeys in This World (Finland); the Movies That Matter Human Rights Award went to Jerusalem is Proud to Present (Israel) by Nitzan Gilady and a special mention to The Dictator Hunter by Klaartje Quirijns; the Doc U! youth jury chose Benson Lee's Planet B-Boy as its winner; and the Stimuleringsfonds Documentary Award went to Elizabeth Rocha Salgado for Senses, Doors of the Soul (Zintuigen, deuren naar de ziel).

A special award was also given to Hubert Sauper for Darwin's Nightmare, voted by the audience as the top film at IDFA over the last two decades.
The awards were given as IDFA, celebrating its 20th anniversary, drew to a close this weekend.

IDFA remains the largest documentary festival in the world, growing this year to 145,000 admissions from 131,000 last year.This year, the festival moved to new premises in the heart of old Amsterdam, taking over flagship venue The Tuschinski Cinema for its duration. Special guests attending the festival included Sauper and legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog.

Meanwhile, among the new projects presented at the Forum (the co-production and financing event held during the festival) were a new project by Alfonso Cuaron (Children Of Men, Harry Potter), based on Naomi Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism. The documentary explores how America's 'free market' policies came to dominate the world and argues that they were imposed through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. The film is being made through Renegade Pictures, the company set up in the summer of 2006 by ex- BBC Head of Documentaries Alan Hayling and filmmaker Alex Cooke.

IDFA has continued to grow over the last two decades, but festival director Ally Derks insists the event will retain its informality whatever its
future size. 'We are not a VIP festival, we are not a commercial festival - we're documentaries! We don't need red carpets and so on,' she said in an interview over the weekend.

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