Jury report: 2022 Envision Competition

Jury statement

The jury is grateful to the festival for a diverse selection of films—a diversity that’s both geographical and thematic. We discovered stories that moved and troubled us, entertained and shocked us. We traveled to places that endured historical injustice and immersed us in personal and collective struggles. We were invited to reflect on our turbulent past and present through the power of cinema. The festival not only offered us a wide range of films that triggered thoughts and discussion among our jury, but also great hospitality: IDFA guided us through these days and presented the films to us in wonderful cinemas.

Our warmest thanks go to our jury host Jori(k) Amit Galama, who gracefully and generously accompanied us these past days. Thank you again to the festival for entrusting us with this difficult task of highlighting stories and opening windows to a bittersweet world.

Special Mention

The jury recognizes this film for incorporating the oral history of the Mapuche Indigenous people and challenging the romantic ecological portrait of threatened forests by a 19th-century European in Chile. The Special Mention goes to Notes for a Film by Ignacio Agüero.

IDFA Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution

This work is a collage of wide textural range. The film takes a spiritual approach to salvage an immense cultural loss due to an unwanted war—told through a family archive. An elegy to a homeland pillaged by senseless violence is built as a cinematic poem and a love letter to a father. For its unique cinematic grammar, visual texture, and time-based collage, the IDFA Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution goes to My Lost Country by Ishtar Yasin Gutiérrez.

IDFA Award for Best Directing

The jury recognized Roberta Torre’s accomplishment in fusing the key directors’ filmmaking tools: music, editing, set design, and costume elements to realize this moving and entertaining fantasia reunion portrait of a group of trans women—children of the sexual revolution. The Award for Best Directing goes to The Fabulous Ones.

IDFA Award for Best Film in the Envision Competition

This film is an outcome of the digital era, of an entire generation of children whose reliable outlet for their intimacies, fears, and desires is social media. The filmmaker blew us away with his ability to structure and edit the found footage of these individual voices into a powerful collective choir. Dark at moments, the film is a humorous yet heart-wrenching portrait of a lost generation under a dictatorial regime. Surrounded by violence and hopelessness, from the home and the school to the intimidating political system, they show persistent rebellion and dignity. For its dramaturgical rigor, masterful editing, and political commitment, the Award for Best Film goes to Manifesto by Angie Vinchito.