Larysa Kondracki’s The Whistleblower starring Rachel Weisz and Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel’s Louder Than A Bomb have won the 22nd Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival’s (PSIFF) narrative and documentary audience awards.

The FIPRESCI award for best foreign language film of the year went to France’s foreign language Academy Award submission Of Gods And Men from Xavier Beauvois. 

Lars Rosing received the FIPRESCI award for best for Greenland’s Oscar submission Nuummioq and Anne Coesens took the actress prize for Illegal.

The New Voices/New Visions category returned Denmark’s Nothing’s All Bad from Mikkel Munch-Fals as its best film and gave a special mention to Sound Of Noise (Sweden-France) and 40 (Turkey).

The John Schlesinger Award for outstanding first documentary went to Lynn True and Nelson Walker’s Summer Pasture (China-Tibet-USA), while the Bridging The Border prize was awarded to Iciar Bollain’s Spanish foreign language Oscar entry Even The Rain (Spain-France-Mexico).

The festival ends on January 17 following a selection of Best Of Fest titles and over the course of 11 days screened 205 films from 69 countries, including 41 of the 65 foreign language entries for this year’s Oscars.

PSIFF director Darryl Macdonald is claiming record attendances and added: “Everything, from our film line-up to the stellar awards gala honourees, to our Talking Pictures events and our tribute to Michael Douglas, have been warmly embraced by audiences and industry alike, marking this as a banner year for us.”

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