Behrooz Karamizade’s Empty Nets and Ibrahim Nash’at’s documentary Hollywoodgate have scooped the top prizes at Adelaide Film Festival (AFF)
Empty Nets received the AFF Feature Fiction Award, with Iranian-born German filmmaker Karamizade winning a cash prize of $6,300 (A$10,000).
The Germany-Iran co-production centres on a young couple fighting for the survival of their relationship in the forbidding world of contemporary Iran. The film previously won the special jury prize at Karlovy Vary and premiered at Filmfest München.
The five-strong jury, which included filmmakers Kitty Green and Goran Stolevski, described the film as a “lean and confident debut” and “a searing portrait of the bleak socioeconomic reality of young people without family money in Iran today”.
Hollywoodgate by German-based Egyptian journalist Nash’at won the AFF Feature Documentary Award, with the director also taking a cash prize of $6,300 (A$10,000).
The Germany-US documentary takes place in Afghanistan and is a portrait of the head of the Taliban airforce commander and a Taliban lieutenant, revealing how the Taliban established its regime in the country. It premiered out of competition at Venice and won the Focus Competition prize at Zurich.
Special mention was made of Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli’s US film Lakota Nation vs United States, and of the performance by Bulgarian actor Eli Skorcheva – who has not been in a film for 30 years – in the title role of Stephan Komandarev’s German-Bulgarian drama Blaga’s Lessons.
AFF runs October 18-29 and announcing the awards at the mid-point means all four films still have a screening before the festival wraps.
“One of the core objectives of the festival is to promulgate screen culture and celebrate international cinema and the competition is a critical factor in achieving that,” AFF director Mat Kesting told Screen.
He added that the box office generated by AFF is set to surpass last year’s record total.
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