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74th Cannes Film Festival Closes
THE 74th edition Cannes International Film Festival closed yesterday after 10 days of screening, meetings and networking. The festival was declared opened on July 6 by Americans Jodie Foster and Spike Lee, the Spaniard Pedro Almodóvar and the Korean Bong Joon Ho, the last director to receive the Palme d’or at Cannes in 2019. Like the opening, the excitement was palpable in the Grand Théâtre Lumière for the close of the Festival in Cannes. The list of winners was not ready as at press time, but the festival press office had released the list of the winners of the Un Certain Regard category. Refocused on the discovery of emerging filmmakers, the 2021 Un Certain Regard has offered twenty features in its competition. Six of them were first films that compete as well for the Caméra d’or. The opening film was Arthur Harari’s Onoda - 10 000 Nights
in the Jungle. Led by the director and screenwriter Andrea Arnold, the Jury was made up of the director and screenwriter Mounia Meddour, the actress Elsa Zylberstein, the director and screenwriter Daniel Burman and Michael Covino, director and actor. The Un Certain Regard prize was won by Razzhimaya Kulaki ( Unclenching The Fist) as directed by Kira Kovalenko while ‘ Grosse Freiheit’ ( Great Freedom) as directed by Sebastian Meise got the Jury Prize. The Ensemble prize went to ‘ Bonne Mere ( Good Mothers) by Hafsia Herzi while the prize for Courage, Originality and Special Mention went to ‘ La Civil’ as directed by Teodora Ana Mihai, ‘ Lamb’ by Valdimar Johannsson and ‘ Noche De Fuego ( Prayers For The Stolen) directed by Tatiana Huezo, respectively.
Durban Filmmart Postpones 2021 edition
IN the wake of the ongoing unrest, violence and widespread destruction of property in parts of Kwazulu- Natal and Gauteng, the Durban Filmmart has postponed the virtual event that was meant to run from July 16 to 25. The 12th edition of the Durban Filmmart will now take place from August 13 to 22. Magdalene Reddy, Acting General Manager for the Durban Filmmart, said the decision to postpone the virtual event by a month was not taken lightly. “The board of the Durban Filmmart has decided, that in good conscience, we cannot host an event that celebrates African film while large parts of South Africa are experiencing such trauma. We remain sensitive to what South Africa and its citizens are going through, and this decision takes into account both operational integrity and the safety of all concerned.” This year’s Durban Filmmart has as theme, Disrupt! The shape of stories to
come and will interrogate the challenges and opportunities the changes in the film industry represent, while celebrating the new contours of access as online leads the way, as remote working connects us differently, and new collaborations emerge. However, delegate registration is still open on the following link: http:// www. durbanfilmmart. co. za.
Berlinale Fund Approves New Funding 10 Recommendations
IN the 34th jury session of Berlinale World Cinema Fund( WCF), 10 funding recommendations for projects from Afghanistan, Argentina, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cape Verde, Colombia, Malaysia, Senegal, Tunisia and Turkey were made. The WCF disclosed that it is happy to support independent cinema even more strongly in times of crisis and to promote the visibility of the cultural complexity of the world. The WCF has also awarded the WCF Europe – TFL Audience Design Award, in cooperation with the Torinofilmlab ( TFL). The WCF jury made its selection from 201 submitted projects from a total of 52 countries. The funding recommendations encompass funding in the amount of 460,000 Euros. Two directors have participated in Berlinale Talents in the past; one project was presented at the Talents Project Market in 2021. The members of the jury are the documentary film producer and documentary creative advisor Marta Andreu ( Spain), the producer Zsuzsanna Kiràly ( Germany / Austria), film scholar and curator Viola Shafik ( Germany / Egypt) and Vincenzo Bugno ( Italy / Germany), the head of WCF. Additionally, the jurors for WCF Africa are the producer, festival director of the pan- African film festival FESPACO and the Berlin festival Afrikamera, Alex Moussa Sawadogo ( Burkina Faso) and the Berlinale delegate for SubSaharan Africa Dorothee Wenner ( Germany). Since 2004, the Berlinale World Cinema Fund has been successfully supporting film production in regions characterised by an insufficient film infrastructure by virtue of its increasingly differentiated funding programme ( WCF, WCF Europe, WCF Africa, WCF ACP) and advocating cultural diversity in German cinemas. WCF- funded films are regularly invited to international film festivals. Currently, four films including The Grave Digger’s Wife by Khadar Ayderus Ahmed ( Finland / Germany / France) and Feathers by Omar el Zohairy ( France / Egypt / Netherlands / Greece) are in the Cannes Film Festival.