Brussels Med-Fest awards Son of Babylon, Metastases
by Vitor Pinto
The 11th Brussels Mediterranean Film Festival (November 5-13) ended Saturday night with the event’s Grand Prize going to Mohammed Al-Daradji’s Son of Babylon [+see also:
trailer
film profile], and the Special Jury Prize to Metastases (Croatia) by Branko Schmidt.
The jury chaired by French actor Claude Brasseur and comprising Arta Dobroshi, Samir Guesmi, José-Luis Peñafuerte and Nabil Ben Yadir emphasized the humanist side of Al-Daradji’s Iraqi/French/Palestinian/UK/Egyptian co-production, which follows the journey of 12 year-old Kurd Ahmed and his grandmother across Iraq, in search of her son, Ahmed’s father, arrested 12 years ago by Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard.
The Grand Prize consists of €5,000 for the promotion and bilingual subtitling (French and Dutch) of the film, which does not yet have a Belgian distributor.
Schmidt’s Metastases depicts the lives of four junkies who come of age after the Balkan War. The consequences of war are seen as a cancer spread throughout Croatian society, and these men in particular have “no hope for the future”, the director told Cineuropa in a video interview to be posted soon.
The jury also gave a Special Mention to Spanish family drama The Island Inside by Dunia Ayaso and Félix Sabroso while the Audience Award went to the Israeli film Sumô by Sharon Maymon and Erez Tadmor.
The next Brussels Mediterranean Film Festival will be back at the Botanique Cultural Centre in 2012.
Watch the interviews from the Bruxelles Med-Fest:
Branko Schmidt • director, Metastases
Dunia Ayaso and Félix Sabroso • directors, The Island Inside
Dima El-Horr • director, Everyday Is a Holiday
Lyes Salem • director, Mascarades
Ismaël Saïdi • director, Ahmed Gassiaux
Hassan Benjelloun • director, Les oubliés de l’histoire
Eyal Sivan • director, Jaffa - The Orange's Clockwork
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