Argentine film wins Best Picture at Macau film fest
MACAU: ‘Hunting Season’, the debut feature of Argentinian fi lmmaker Natalia Garagiola, was the big winner on Thursday evening at the Macau International Film Festival, taking home the best fi lm prize during a splashy awards ceremony.
Chinese fi lmmaker Xin Yukun won the event’s jury prize with his mystery thriller ‘ The Wrath of Silence,’ while French fi lmmaker Xavier Legrand won best director for ‘Custody.’
French director Laurent Cantet, chair of the event’s competition jury, praised ‘Hunting Season’ fi lm for the “precision of its directing” and its “fluid style and construction.”
A taught family drama, ‘Hunting Season’ explores the strains between a father and son who struggle to connect amidst the wilds of Patagonia.
“The fi lm deals with subjects both difficult and delicate: mourning for a mother’s death, the reconciliation between estranged fathers and sons, the loneliness of young men,” Cantet added. He was joined onstage by Malaysian actress Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh.
The other big winner was ‘ The Wrath of Silence’, a wouldbe revenge thriller, or Chinese Western, about a poor miner searching for his missing son in the corrupt hinterlands of China’s far north. The fi lm, directed with flare by Xin Yukun, won the fest’s jury prize, while its male lead, Song Yang, nabbed best actor honours. The jury praised ‘Wrath’ for “its capacity to navigate between a brutal realism and the conventions of genre fi lm.”
French fi lmmaker Xavier Legrand, meanwhile, won the best director prize for his acclaimed family divorce drama ‘Custody’. Legrand also received the best director award at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year for the fi lm.
Best actress honours went to Jessie Buckley for ‘ Beast’, a British serial killer mystery. The fi lm’s cinematographer, Benjamin Kracun, also claimed Macau’s award for technical contribution.
Samuel Moaz, writer- director of the Israeli terrorismaftermath drama ‘Foxtrot’, won the best screenplay prize. The fi lm is just now beginning its North American release.
Assisting Cantet in the selection of this year’s Macau fest winners were fellow jurists actress Joan Chen, writerdirector Jessica Hausner, novelist Lawrence Osborne and director Royston Tan.
“We couldn’t be happier with the response of Macau audiences to our programme, and I thank all the fi lmmakers who came here to present their fi lms,” said Mike Goodridge, the event’s artistic director. “It’s been a great week and a wonderful celebration of the big- screen experience.”