Mungiu charms Innsbruck audiences

by Bénédicte Prot

12/06/2007 - The 16th Innsbruck International Film Festival (June 5-10), which screened 70 titles from every continent, selected its winners this weekend.

Congolese helmer Balafu Bakupa-Kayind took the Tyrol Prize for Juju Factory, while audiences were won over by the Cannes Palme d'Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [trailer, film focus] by Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu.

The Innsbruck French Institute Award, reserved for French films, was presented to Abderrahmane Sissako for his French/Mali co-production Bamako [trailer], which also screened at the Vienna Film Festival.

The ray-Filmmagazin Award for Best Documentary went to German title On the Outskirts, in which director Aysun Bademsoy depicts an extraordinary residential complex in the south of Turkey.

Competition screenings at the festival – which opened last week with Swiss film Rajas Reise by Karl Saurer – featured The Way I Spent the End of the World [trailer] by Romania’s Catalin Mitulescu and Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth’s excellent co-production Khadak [trailer, film focus] (see Focus).

In the Visions of Reality section, Austrian audiences could discover Thierry Michel’s French/Belgian title Congo River [trailer] and Florian Borchmeyer’s German production Havana: The New Art of Making Ruins.

Meanwhile, the Mediterranean Panorama presented Croatian film Sorry for Kung Fu by Ognjen Svilicic, Nora Hoppe’s French/Italian/German title La fine del mare, as well as a number of European/North African co-productions.

(Translated from French)