Ixcanul Volcano steals the show at Films from the South
- Jayro Bustamante’s movie has won the top prize at the Oslo gathering
Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante’s feature debut, Ixcanul Volcano [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jayro Bustamante
film profile], received the Silver Mirror, the top prize at Oslo’s Films from the South Festival – Northern Europe’s largest showcase for films from (or about) developing countries – which wrapped the celebration of its 25th anniversary yesterday (18 October).
Bustamante’s portrait of a woman caught between the expectations of her Mayan family and her own wish to run away and live her life “was the one film that especially stood out” among the 18 entries in the competition programme.
The Doc:South Award went to Dutch director Morgan Knibbe’s Those Who Feel the Fire Burning, whose story about the hopeless existence of refugees stuck at the edge of Europe is told by the wandering ghost of a dead man.
The festival’s Honorary Award was given to Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako, while French filmmaker Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Jacques Audiard
film profile] collected the Audience Award and its local distributor Tour de Force €7,000 in marketing support.
Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives [+see also:
trailer
film profile] won the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 2010, visited the festival with his new film, Cemetery of Splendour [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which was co-produced by Norway’s Tordenfilm, with Kick The Machine (Thailand). Scripted by Weerasethakul, it follows a middle-aged woman who develops a relationship with a soldier at a small-town hospital in Thailand, where he is admitted with a strange case of sleeping sickness. Norway’s Merfilm has scheduled an early 2016 release.
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