Georgian film wins top Sarajevo fest award,Cleese and Stone honoured
SARAJEVO: A Georgian film about a woman struggling to reconcile family life and her passion for writing has been chosen as the best movie at the 23rd Sarajevo Film Festival.
Three-time Oscar-winning US film-maker Oliver Stone and British actor John Cleese were also awarded with lifetime achievement awards during a week-long festival which has shown 235 films from 54 countries to an audience of about 100,000.
An international jury chaired by Mexican film-maker Michel Franco awarded “Scary Mother”, a debut movie by 27year-old Georgian director Ana Urushadze, with the Heart of Sarajevo, the festival’s main award.
It described the film as “provocative and elegantly directed”.
This was the second time a Georgian film has triumphed in Sarajevo after “In Bloom” by directors Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gros won the main prize in 2013.
Romanian film-maker Emanuel Parvu was awarded best director for his movie “Meda, or the Not So Bright Side of Things”, and Serban Pavlu won the best actor award for his role in the movie.
The best actress award went to Canadian actress Ornela Kapetani for her role in “Daybreak”, a debut feature by Albanian director Gentian Koci.
The Sarajevo Film Festival, founded as an act of defiance toward the end of the 1992-95 siege during the Bosnian war, has grown into the largest industry platform for the region stretching from Austria to Russia and Turkey.
Meanwhile, Monty Python star Cleese said on Wednesday that the need for comedy was greater than ever, as he accepted the “Honorary Heart of Sarajevo” award at the festival.
Cleese, 77, was presented with the award for his “extraordinary contribution” to the art of film, which he described as “very generous”.
“I’m almost embarrassed to be put in the same category as some of the people who won this award, like Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese and (British director) Stephen Frears,” he said.
“But I accept it not as a film person but more as a comedian, because I think at this time in world history we have never needed comedians more.”
Cleese created and starred in the hit television series “Fawlty Towers” and his most prominent work in the movies includes the four Monty Python films and A Fish Called Wanda.
The latter film was projected at an open-air screening to the 3,000 festival-goers in Sarajevo after Cleese accepted his award.
On Sunday, triple Oscarwinning director Oliver Stone was also awarded a “Heart of Sarajevo”. — Reuters/AFP