Films dealing with love between different Indian castes, the lives of the elderly after the death of their partners and the murder of the transsexual Gisberta won this Sunday’s FEST de Espinho — Festival of New Directors, New Cinema.
The competition held in this city in the Aveiro district for 178 works, selected from among 4,500 applications, awarded the 100-minute feature film “The adamant girl/A rapariga inflexível”, by Indian director PS Vinothraj, with the Golden Lynx for Fiction. It also awarded the same prize in the documentary category to the 76-minute film “Echo of you/Eco de ti”, for which Danish director Zara Zerny also won the Public Award, voted for by the contest’s spectators.
The National Grand Prize went to the 30-minute short film “Seu nome era Gisberta” by Sérgio Galvão Roxo.
In the first case, Vinothraj’s film tells the story of a young Indian woman who falls in love with a man from a lower caste and, faced with her family’s refusal to accept the marriage, decides not to speak to him again, so they consider her possessed and subject her to exorcism rituals.
“Echo of You” also speaks about love, but based on the experiences of nine elderly Danes, aged between 80 and 100, who shared with director Zara Serny their perspectives on the loss of their spouses and partners, some of whom admitted that they lived longer with their partners than alone.
The best Portuguese film of the festival evokes the story of the Brazilian transsexual and immigrant Gilberta Salce, murdered in Porto in 2006. Combining documentary material, virtual reality and illustrations and animation by Pedro Velho, the short film conveys an anti-transphobic message narrated by trans actress Alexia Victoria.
With 268 films distributed in competitive and extra-competitive sessions, as well as an intense training program with world-renowned professionals, the edition marking the 20th anniversary of the FEST kicked off on June 24 and ends on Monday with the exhibition of outstanding works from the two decades of the event and the presentation of some of the 2024 winners.
The list of top winners also includes “It Turns Blu,” which won the Silver Lynx in Fiction for Iranian director and actress Shadi Karamroudi.
Also awarded at the Silver level were: “City of Poets”, by Iranian-Dutch director Sara Rajaei, in the Documentary category; “Tako Tsubo/Broken Heart Syndrome”, an Austrian-German production by directors Fanny Sorgo and Eva Pedroza, in the Animation category; and “The Person with the Eyeball”, by Japanese author Yuri Muraoka, in the Experimental section.
The film “The Distance Between Us” by French director Léo Fontaine was awarded the prize as the second most voted film by the public.
Another outstanding short film at the 20th FEST was “Animal,” which received two honorable mentions in the main fiction film category: one for the direction of Greek director Sofia Exarchou and another for the performances of Dimitra Vlagopoulou and Flomaria Papadaki.
Source: Observadora
