The Durban International Film Festival’s announcement of its
award-winners came as the festival rounded off a very successful year, with
significant increase in attendance with many films screening to sold-out
audiences.
Festival Manager Peter Machen says: “I was extremely happy
with the success of DIFF 2014, and it was very gratifying to witness both the
large amount of sold-out screenings and also the huge enthusiasm for the festival,
both from local audiences and from the hundreds of guests attending the
festival from around the world.”
At the ceremony, the festival unveiled its new statuette,
the Golden Giraffe, designed by Durban artist, Caryn Tilbury. Machen said of
the new awards: “We are extremely proud that the festival finally has an iconic
award. Venice has the Golden Lion, Berlin has the Golden Bear and now Durban
has the Golden Giraffe. Caryn Tilbury’s beautifully idiosyncratic design is
perfectly representative of the slick but edgy nature of the festival.”
At the awards ceremony, the festival’s highest accolade of
Best Feature Film went to Malian auteur Abderrahmane Sissako’s masterful Timbuktu, from a selection of
competition films that the international jury described as having dealt with
“individuals coping with ideological, social and political pressures whilst
trying to find their own identity and humanity in a world increasingly under
distress.” The Best Feature Film award carries a cash prize of R50,000.
The jury commended Sissako’s film for being “an impressively
well-made film that makes us aware, in an extraordinarily human and gentle way,
of the fight for dignity and freedom of individuals against oppression and
violence. Beautifully crafted and showing mature accomplishment on all levels
the film illustrates the absurdity of war and ideological dogmatism and offers
humour, gentility and humaneness as a possible solution to the madness that
seems to engulf so many regions in the world and on our continent. It embraces
cinema as a weapon of love against violence and intolerance.”
The International Jury consisted of: Rémi Bonhomme, who
heads Critics Week at Cannes Film Festival; Diarah N’Daw-Spech, the co-founder
and co-director of the African Diaspora Film Festival in New York; Andrew
Worsdale, writer, director and previous winner of Best South African Feature
film at DIFF; and actress and activist Paulina Malefane, known for her role of
Carmen in both the stage and film productions of U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, and co-founder of the Isango Ensemble.
The award for Best South African Feature Film, which carries
a prize of R25,000 went to Jenna Bass’ exciting first feature Love the One You Love. The local jury
stated that they chose the film “for its stylistic and narrative freshness”,
calling it “a playful, quirky and idiosyncratic debut made with curiosity,
warmth, heart and sensitivity.” Bass was also honoured with the prize for Best
Direction in a South African Feature Film, with the jury describing the young
director as “inquisitive, innovative and with a unique voice and luminous
cinematic sensibility, who shows us a contemporary universe which is as
imaginative as it is true”.
The accolade for Best Documentary went to Mahdi Fleifel’s A World Not Ours. According to the jury,
“This intimate, affecting and often humorous debut feature is a portrait of
three generations of exile in a refugee camp in southern Lebanon, a Palestinian
pocket of hemmed-in buildings and stifled hopes. Fleifel may have set out to
tell a small domestic story about the loved ones he has left behind but the
result is a powerful tale of the human cost of a political nightmare, the end
of which seems very far away.”
Best South African Documentary was awarded to Rehad Desai’s Miners Shot Down. The film was also
awarded the Amnesty International (Durban) Human Rights Award, which carries an
award of R10,000 sponsored by the Artists for Human Rights Trust. The film was
chosen “for its profoundly moving portrayal of the Marikana miners’ massacre.
The human rights abuses so vividly portrayed include the right to life, the
right to justice, the right to protection by the police, the right to know, the
right to peaceful protest and the right to human dignity.”
The full list of awards is as follows:
Best Feature Film: Timbuktu
by Abderrahmane Sissako
Best First Feature Film: Salvation
Army by Abdellah Taia
Best Direction: Noaz Deshe for White Shadow
Best Screenplay: Love
is Strange written by Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias
Best Cinematography: Sofian el Fani - Timbuktu
Best Actor: Ibrahim Ahmed - Timbuktu & Tony Kgoroge - Cold
Harbour
Best Actress: Chi Mhende - Love the One You Love
Durban International Film Festival Award for Artistic
Bravery: Petter Brunner - My Blind Heart
Best Sa Documentary: Miners
Shot Down by Rehad Desai. Special Mention: Nelson Mandela: The Myth and Me by Khalo Matabane
Best Direction in a South African Documentary: I, Afrikaner by Annalet Steenkamp. Special
Mention: Fatherland by Tarryn
Crossman
Best Documentary: A
World Not Ours by Mahdi Fleifel
Best Short Film: Out
of Place by Ozan Mermer
Best South African Short Film: Keys, Money, Phone by Roger Young
Audience Choice Award: (tba – see separate story)
The 35th Durban International Film Festival is organised by
the Centre For Creative Arts (University of KwaZulu-Natal) with support by the
National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund (principal funder), National Film and
Video Foundation, KwaZulu-Natal Department of Economic Development and Tourism,
HIVOS, City of Durban, German Embassy in South Africa, Goethe Institut of South
Africa, French Season in South Africa, and a range of other valued partners.
For more information visit http://www.durbanfilmfest.co.za/
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