The winners of the various IDFA competition programs were just announced in Escape, during the awards ceremony of the 24th IDFA. Seung-Jun Yi’s Planet of Snail (South Korea) won the VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. The Special Jury Award went to 5 Broken Cameras (Palestine/Israel) by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, who also won the Publieke Omroep IDFA Audience Award. The film received financial support from the Jan Vrijman Fund.
VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length DocumentaryThe VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary (consisting of a sculpture and € 12,500) went to Seung-Jun Yi for
Planet of Snail (South Korea), which depicts the everyday life of deaf & blind Young-Chan and the love of his life, Soon-Ho.
Planet of Snail was pitched at the FORUM 2010.
Special Jury AwardThe jury also awarded a Special Jury Award to directors Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi for
5 Broken Cameras (Palestine/Israel/Netherlands/France). The film is a personal portrait of a Palestinian village resisting encroaching Jewish settlements, as recorded by an inhabitant of the village over a number of years.
5 Broken Cameras received financial support from the
Jan Vrijman Fund and was a project at the IDFAcademy’s Summer School in 2010.
Read the jury report VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. NTR IDFA Award for Best Mid-Length DocumentaryJorge Gaggero received the NTR IDFA Award for Best Mid-Length Documentary (€ 10,000) for
Montenegro (Argentina), about an old man living with his dogs on a quiet island in a river delta, in a seemingly harmonious symbiosis with a hermit who lives a little way away.
Read the jury report NTR IDFA Award for Best Mid-Length Documentary.
IDFA Award for First AppearanceThe IDFA Award for First Appearance (€ 5,000) was presented to Xun Yu for
The Vanishing Spring Light (China/Canada), which documents the life of the residents of West Street in Dujiangyan City.
Read the jury report IDFA Award for First Appearance.
Dioraphte IDFA Award for Dutch Documentary The Dioraphte IDFA Award for Dutch Documentary (€ 5,000) went to Jessica Gorter for
900 Days, in which survivors of the siege of Leningrad soberly separate propagandist myth from their horrific personal memories.
Read the jury report Dioraphte IDFA Award for Dutch Documentary. Publieke Omroep IDFA Audience AwardDe Publieke Omroep IDFA Audience Award ( € 5.000) went to
5 Broken Cameras (Palestine/Israel/Netherlands/France) by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi.
View the top 20 Publieke Omroep IDFA Audience Award. IDFA Award for Student DocumentaryKaren Winther received the IDFA Award for Student Documentary (€ 2,500) for
The Betrayal (UK/Norway). The film is about Karen, who as a teenager made a crucial mistake as part of the Norwegian squatting scene, and is hoping for forgiveness.
Read the jury report IDFA Award for Student Documentary. BlackBerry IDFA DOC U Award The BlackBerry IDFA DOC U Award – a € 1,500 prize awarded by an independent youth jury – went to
The Last Days of Winter (Iran) by Mehrdad Oskouei. The film is a portrait of seven Iranian boys in a youth detention centre, who talk candidly about their lives.
Read the jury report BlackBerry IDFA DOC U Award. IDFA Award for Best Green Screen Documentary The IDFA Award for Best Green Screen Documentary (€ 2,500) went to
Bitter Seeds (USA/India) by Micha X. Peled. Filmmaker Peled investigates why every thirty minutes an Indian cotton farmer commits suicide, and follows one such farmer on his journey to the edge of the abyss.
Read the jury report IDFA Award for Best Green Screen Documentary. Bitter Seeds (USA/India) by Micha X. Peled also received the Oxfam Global Justice Award during the IDFA Talkshow on Thursday, November 24.
IDFA DocLab Award for Digital StorytellingThis year saw the presentation for the second time of the IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling (€ 2,500). This went to
Insitu (France) by Antoine Viviani. Insitu is a search for creative, artistic ways to intervene in the public space.
Read the jury report IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling. Saturday, November 19
Last Days Here (USA) by Don Argott and Demian Fenton won the inaugural
IDFA PLAY Award for Best Music Documentary.Facts and figuresAlthough the festival runs until Sunday, we can justifiably say that the festival will by then have attracted more visitors than last year.
If the trend continues over the next three days, the number of visits will have increased from 180,000 in 2010 to over 200,000. Net takings will have risen from € 850,000 in 2010 to over € 1.000,000 this year.
The number of Dutch and international guests increased in relation to 2010: to 2,670 from 2,477.
Some 5,200 school students from primary and secondary schools visited the schools’ screenings during the past week.