El Gouna FF 2019: Awards and Closing Night
‘You Will Die at Twenty’, ‘Talking About Trees’ and ‘Exam’ Win Golden Stars, and ‘Cinema for Humanity’ Award Goes to Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables
El Gouna Film Festival concluded its third edition with a closing ceremony where the award-winning films were announced, with total award value at US$224,000.
The winners were as follows.
Watch the Awards on Euronews here.
Feature Narrative Competition
El Gouna Golden Star for Narrative Film (Trophy, certificate, and US$50,000): You Will Die at Twenty by Amjad Abu Alala. See my review.
El Gouna Silver Star for Narrative Film (Trophy, certificate, and US $25,000): Corpus Christi by Jan Komasa
El Gouna Bronze Star for Narrative Film (Trophy, certificate, and US $15,000): Adam by Maryam Touzani. See my review.
El Gouna Star for the Best Arab Narrative Film (Trophy, certificate, and US $20,000): Papicha by Mounia Meddour
El Gouna Star for the Best Actor (Trophy, certificate): Bartosz Bielenia, Corpus Christi
El Gouna Star for the Best Actress (Trophy, certificate): Hend Sabry, Noura’s Dream
The gritty, Tunisian film tells the story of a woman seeking a divorce from her imprisoned husband while trying to care for her children and maintain new romance.
Lead actress, Hend Sabry, told Euronews how the movie’s edgy exploration of cultural taboos left cinema-goers with something to think about.
There were two or three minutes of silence after the film ended, and the claps were a little bit… I don’t know… scared, shocked, surprised. Which is actually what cinema should create as a reaction.
The jury of the feature narrative competition was headed by Egyptian director Khairy Beshara whose film Moondog is on my list of must-sees; director and producer Mai Masri, known for 3000 Nights (2015), Beirut Diaries: Truth, Lies and Videos (2006) and 33 Days (2007).; Nashen Moodley, director of the Sydney Film Festival; Resul Pookutty, Asia’s most feted sound technician and Academy Award-winner for Best Achievement in Sound Mixing; Russian film critic Stas Tyrkin, film critic and artistic director of the Dvizheniye National Debut Film Festival and the Strelka Film Festival.
Feature Documentary Competition
El Gouna Golden Star for Documentary Film (Trophy, certificate, and US $30,000): Talking About Trees by Suhaib Gasmelbari
Interesting note: Both Golden Star winners are from Sudan, a country now in the midst of forming a new democratic government. All eyes are on Sudan as we wish for its ultimate success in creating a nation that honors and respects human rights and all that we would expect a government of the people, by the people and for the people to do. Inshallah!
El Gouna Silver Star for Documentary Film (Trophy, certificate, and US $15,000): 143 Sahara Street by Hassen Ferhani
El Gouna Bronze Star for Documentary Film (Trophy, certificate, and US $7,500): Kabul, City in the Wind by Aboozar Amini
El Gouna Star for the Best Arab Documentary Film (Trophy, certificate, and US $10,000): Ibrahim: A Fate to Define by Lina Alabed
The head of the feature documentary competition jury was the acclaimed Senegalese director, producer, screenwriter and actor Moussa Touré. Jury members included award-winning director and producer Anne Aghion; Ludmila Cvikova, who was a programmer at the International Film Festival Rotterdam for 15 years; Talal Derki, a renowned Syrian film director, producer and screenwriter who was nominated for an Academy Award in 2019; award-winning Egyptian costume designer Nahed Nasrallah.
Short Film Competition
El Gouna Golden Star for Short Film (Trophy, certificate, and US $15,000): Exam by Sonia K. Haddad
El Gouna Silver Star for Short Film (Trophy, certificate, and US $7,500): Ome by Wassim Geagea
El Gouna Bronze Star for Short Film (Trophy, certificate, and US $4,000): Flesh by Camila Kater
El Gouna Star for the Best Arab Short Film (Trophy, certificate, and US $5,000): Give Up the Ghost by Zain Duraie
Special Jury Mention: 16 December by Álvaro Gago Díaz
The Short Film Competition jury was headed by prominent Egyptian director Marwan Hamed, who received numerous awards and honors for his feature films such as The Yacoubian Building (2006) and The Blue Elephant (2014), included Colombian-Belgian film director and cinematographer Juanita Onzaga; the director of the Tampere Film Festival, Jukka-Pekka Laakso; two acclaimed figures from the Arab world Iraqi director, producer and screenwriter Mohamed Daradji, whose films have been selected for leading international film festivals; and Tunisian star Dorra Zarrouk, one of the leading actresses in Egypt and the Middle East who starred in more than 30 films, theater plays and TV series across the region.
Cinema for Humanity Audience Award
The Festival’s Audience Award for a film exemplifying humanitarian themes (Trophy, certificate, and US $20,000): Les Misérables by Ladj Ly
NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film: Kabul, City in the Wind by Aboozar Amini.
See NETPAC blog by Gulnara Abikeyeva (Kazakhstan) and edited by Edited by Latika Padgaonkar.
The NETPAC jury — Nada Azhari (Syria, France), Hasan Haddad (Bahrein) and I — gave the prize to an Afghan documentary, Kabul, City in the Wind (Afghanistan-Netherlands-Japan-Germany) directed by Aboozar Amini. There are two characters in the film: a bus driver who loses his bus in the end because he is unable to cope with debts he has incurred for it. And at the center of the second story, a teenager takes care of his 5 and 2-year-old brothers after his father leaves to work in Iran. In both cases, we see survival stories, and we hope that the boys will, despite everything, have happier fates than their fathers. This debut film by Amini had already received an award at the Amsterdam Film Festival. In addition to narrating touching stories, it was shot in a magnificent cinematic language. That is why our citation for this work read: “This film filled with humanity, beauty, truth of reality and made in the best cinematic way”. — Gulnara Abikeyeva (Kazakhstan)
FIPRESCI Award: 1982 by Oualid Mouaness
