Athens Int’l Film Festival announces winners
Most of the submissions are from the US and France filmmakers while 691 documentaries and 215 features have been registered as entries from Germany, Turkey, England, Italy, Canada, Spain, Brazil and other countries.
Tehran will host the 15th edition of the event in late November. ‘The Heiresses’ (Las herederas) by Marcelo Martinessi won the best film award (Golden Athena) at the 24th Athens International Film Festival which was held from September 19-30.
The film, an international coproduction by Paraguay, Uruguay, Germany, Brazil, Norway and France, is a socially charged drama placing a loving couple of two mid aged women in a stressful situation of intense imbalance. It is sold worldwide by French outfit Luxbox.
Paraguayan Martinessi’s debut premiered in Berlinale last February where it won the Alfred Bauer award for best first film, the Fipresci trophy and the best actress award for interpreter Ana Brun. Weird Wave is the Greek distributor,
German social drama ‘In the Aisles’ (In den Gangen), Thomas Stuber’s second directorial outing dealing with the daily routine of a shy supermarket worker received the best screenplay award for Clemens Mayer and Stuber.
The film, sold internationally by German Beta Cinema, had received the Ecumenical prize earlier this year at the Berlinale. It will be released in Greece by Strada and Seven Films.
The Fischer Audience award went to the Icelandic, Swedish, Belgian co-production ‘And Breathe Normally’ (Andid Edlilega) where Iceland’s Ísold Uggadóttir, making her feature debut, explores the bond between a single creendaily.com reported. mother working as a passport controller at an airport in Iceland and another unmarried woman from Guinea-bissau who is trying to travel illegally to Canada. The film received the best directing award in the Sundance World Dramatic Competition this year and is sold by The Match Factory. It and was acquired for theatrical release in Greece by Ama Films.
In the Documentaries International Competition, a separate five-member jury headed by Greek director Menelaos Karamangiolis awarded the best film award to the Hungarian production ‘A Woman Captured’ (Egy no Fogsagban) where debutante Bernadett Tuza-ritter deals with the subject of exploitation of in-house woman workers.