Sudanese drama ‘Cotton Queen’ wins top prize at Thessaloniki

Sudanese director Suzannah Mirghani’s debut feature Cotton Queen has won the €10,000 Golden Alexander-Theo Angelopoulos prize for best film at the 66th Thessaloniki International Film Festival (October 30-November 9).

The German-French-Palestinian-Quatari co-production is set in a cotton farming village in Sudan and follows teenage Nafisa who becomes the centre of a power play to determine the future of the village.

Cotton Queen premiered earlier this year in Venice’s Critics’ Week sidebar. The director, who lives in exile and shot the film in Egypt, dedicated the award to her civil war-torn country. 

The Silver Alexander for best director went to Greece’s Aristotelis Maragkos for his sophomore feature Beachcomber. The film, which also received the artistic achievement award for best cinematography for Greek DoP Giorgos Karvelas, tells the story of a young man chasing the shadow of his sailor father’s legacy.

The jury of the international competition, reserved for first and second films, comprised Match Factory head of sales Thania Dimitrakopoulou, US cinematographer Frederick Elmer and filmmaker Elegance Bratton.

They gave the screenplay award to writer Yvonne Gorlach for Christina Tournatzes’ German production Karla about a 12 year-old girl who brings her abusive father to justice. The film also received the Fipresci and the Audience-Fischer awards at Thessaloniki.

Harry Melling won best actor for his part in Harry Lighton’s Pillion which premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard.

Sabrina Amali was named best actress for her role in Nancy Bianadaki’s sophomore feature Maysoon.

The festival gave honorary Golden Alexanders to French star Isabelle Huppert and renowned Greek film maker Giorgos Tsemberopoulos. Both were the subject of retrospectives of their films and offered master classes.

Industry focus

Elsewhere, Spanish director Fernando Souza’s dark feature Tonight Is Forever took the top prize in the Works in Progress section of the festival’s industry platform Agora.

Serbia’s Stefan Djordjevic docu-drama The Leaves Hang Trembling stood out for many at the Crossroads Co-production Forum closely followed by the Greek project The Tide Hears Them but They No Longer Have a Voice by director, composer and designer Yiannis Veslemes.

Meanwhile, 2,000 local film professionals, backed by figures include president of the European Film Academy Juliette Binoche as well as Willem Dafoe, Vicky Krieps, Ruben Östlund, Radu Jude and Paweł Pawlikowski, signed a statement backing the Visibility Zero movement, which is requesting more funding from the Greek government for the audiovisual industry.

The movement, launched in June, pointed out that the country’s selective programmes backing local production have a budget of just €6.5m for 2025. This figure means that the Greek industry ranks last among European screen industries in terms of government support relative to GDP.

For its part the government agency Creative Greece (EKKOMED), in charge of cinema funding and running the tax rebate schemes for international and local productions, pointed out that its €6.5m annual budget this year is 50% higher compared to previous years.

However, Visibility Zero insists that this still falls short of the €15m promised to the industry by the government in November 2023.

• “European cinema must broaden its genre range,” says Seville head Manuel Cristóbal