Wild Bees and Hukkle - the Czech Republic and Hungary's candidates for the Foreign Language Film Oscar - were among the prize-winners at this year's FilmFestival Cottbus which closed on Sunday evening with an overall 15% increase in attendances over 2001.

Bohdan Slama's Wild Bees (Divoke Vcely) received the Euros12,000 main prize in the feature film competition, while a Euros5,000 Special Prize for best direction went to Russia's Alexei Muradov for The Kite (Smej).

The Euros4,000 Special Prize for an outstanding artistic contribution was awarded to Hungary's Gyorgy Palfi and his director of photography for Hukkle which also received the Audience Award, the Cottbus student jury prize for best debut, and a Special Mention from the FIPRESCI jury.

The international critics jury awarded their main FIPRESCI Prize to Petr Zelenka's Year Of The Devil (Rok Dabla) which also picked up the Boulder prize from the Interessenverband Filmkommunikation.