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FESTIVALS Germany

Cottbus chooses extra-Ordinary prize-winner

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The 19th Cottbus Eastern European Film Festival (November 10-15) opened with Michael Hoffman’s German/Russian co-production The Last Station [+see also:
film review
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, about Leo Tolstoy’s final years.

It closed with the hands-down triumph of Serbian director Vladimir Perisic’s Ordinary People [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Vladimir Perisic: Ordinary …
film profile
]
, which describes how a young soldier becomes a murderer in the course of a day. The film, shown in this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week (see review), won the Lubina for Best Film (worth €18,000, to be shared between the director and producers Anthony Doncque and Milena Poylo), and Best Actor Award (for Relja Popovic).

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The jury admired the "extraordinary artistic value of the film, including all the components of a really great work" (plot, cinematography...), its "astonishingly refined construction" and its lead actor’s "minimalist and instinctive" performance.

Anna Karczmarczyk received Best Actress for her role as a high school student in Katarzyna Ruslaniec’s Polish film Mall Girls [+see also:
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. The latter was also crowned Best Debut Film by the Student Jury.

Meanwhile, the Best Director Award was shared by Zvonimir Juric and Goran Devic for Croatian film The Blacks [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Zvonimir Juric, Goran De…
film profile
]
and Russia’s Aleksey Mizgirev for Buben Baraban. These two titles also picked up the FIPRESCI Prize and Ecumenical Jury Prize, respectively.

The IFFS (International Federation of Film Societies) Jury gave the Don Quixote Award to Albanian director Artan Minarolli’s Austrian/French/Albanian co-production Alive!, and a Special Mention to Mizgirev’s film.

Finally, the Dialogue Prize for Intercultural Communication went to Mira Fornay’s Czech/Slovakian film Foxes [+see also:
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]
.

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(Translated from French)

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