Yahoo Lifestyle Rotterdam Winners: Gabriele D’Annunzio Picture ‘Fiume O Morte!’ & ‘Raptures’ Win Top Prizes
Croatian director Igor Bezinović’s documentary Fiume o Morte! exploring the complex figure of Italian poet and playwright Gabriele D’Annunzio has won the top Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).
The film also won the FIPRESCI Award for standout film in the main Tiger Competition.
More from Deadline
Mixing dramatic reconstruction and documentary, the feature explores D’Annunzio’s attempts to annex the city of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) to Italy in the aftermath of the First World War, as a result of his outrage at the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference, which proposed handing the city to Yugoslavia.
The Tiger Competition Jury consisted of Yuki Aditya, Winnie Lau, Peter Strickland, and Andrea Luka Zimmerman. The Jury also initially included Soheila Golestani (The Seed of the Sacred Fig), but she was prevented from leaving Iran due to a travel ban.
“This is a film where people and public spaces are used as co-conspirators in exploring the past through the prism of contemporary Europe. At times of the rise of ultra-nationalism within a contemporary European context, the film playfully grapples with the past not as a closed chapter, but as a living reality,” they wrote in their summing up of their choice.
The two Tiger Special Jury Awards went to Sammy Baloji’s film essay L’arbre de l’authenticité and Tim Ellrich’s Im Haus meiner Eltern.
Photographer and visual artist Baloji’s film essay work explores the Democratic Republic of Congo’s colonial past and how that is tied up with the fate of the Congolese rainforests and their role as consumers of carbon dioxide.
Ellrich’s film revolves around a therapist, specialized in alternative ways to help the sick and infirm, who is forced to balance the demands of her professional life with those of her ageing parents and older brother.
In the competition for the Big Screen sidebar – bridging popular, classic, and arthouse cinema – the main Big Screen Award went to Swedish director Jon Blåhed’s Raptures. The 1930s drama revolves around a woman trapped in her husband’s sectarian movement who quietly fights to protect her family from his bizarre and increasingly dangerous worldview.
The jury consisted of Bero Beyer, Dewi Reijs, Jia Zhao, Sara Rajaei, and Digna Sinke.
NETPAC Award, for the best feature film from the Asia and Pacific regions by a jury from the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema, went to Varsha Bharath’s energetic coming-of-age tale Bad Girl going inside the mind of a rebellious Indian teenager navigating adolescence within the confines of a wealthy, conservative family.
The Netpac jury was made up of Mevlut Akkaya, Rainbow Fong, and Rüdiger Tomczac.
The IFFR Youth Jury Award, selected by a panel of young people, went to Farida Baqi’s The Visual Feminist Manifesto, which takes the spectator through a lyrical and emotional journey of the life of a young woman from birth to adulthood in an unnamed Arab city.
Best of Deadline
Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
