22/01/2013 - Cate Shortland's European WWII aftermath drama received the grand prix at Norway's Tromsø International Film Festival

Australian writer-director Cate Shortland’s German WW2 aftermath drama Lore [+see also:
trailer
interview: Saskia Rosendahl
film profile] was awarded the AuroraPrize – the grand prix - at the 23^rd Tromsø International Film Festival, which ended after extra screenings yesterday (January 21).

“A sensitive film about the transformation of a young girl within the circumstances of war, where her ideas of good and bad, right and wrong are questioned,” said the jury of the film, which has been nominated for seven Australian Oscars.

Set in 1945 after Nazi-Germany’s collapse, the German Australian-UK co-production follows the daughter of a high-ranking SS officer, now imprisoned by Allied forces, who takes her brothers and sisters in security with their grandmother, a 900 km journey up north from Bavaria through a devastated country.

With an audience in excess of 52,000, Tromsø is not only the northern-most showcase in Norway, but also the largest. Among this year’s special events festival director Martha Otto staged an interview with Swedish veteran director Jan Troell, by Finnish director and head of the Midnight Sun Film Festival, Peter von Bagh, accompanied by retrospectives of both.

At Saturday’s awards ceremony at Tromsø’s Kulturhuset in Tromsø, Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s Oscar-nominated No received the Tromsø Audience Award. French director François Ozon collected the Don Quixote Award for his mystery-thriller, In the House [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], while the FIPRESCI critics gave their prize to a French comedy, Noémie Lvovsky’s Camille Rewinds [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. The Norwegian Peace Film Award went to Saudi Arabia director Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Wadjda [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the Tromsø Palm for Best Documentary to There Will Be Some Who Will Not Fear Even That Void, by UK director Saeed Taji Farouky.