30/06/2011

The prize list at the 9th Brussels Film Festival had some surprises in store. The jury, headed by Jacques Weber, opted for a harsh, dense, stifling film weighed down by the inevitable.

The setting is Chernobyl in Ukraine, on April 26, 1986: reactor number four at the nuclear power plant has just exploded. Valery, a Party member, knows he has to get away, as quickly and as far away as possible. But his frenzied dash is hampered by everyday life, that of his girlfriend, his village and his friends, who are intent on making the most of this Saturday like any other.

By awarding the Golden Iris for Best Film to Alexander Mindadze’s Russian/German/Ukrainian movie Innocent Saturday, the official jury (along with the student jury who awarded it the Cinephile Award) made the unusual choice of a historical film which has a sense of urgency, in the light of recent events.

It is a film that takes history as its starting point then gradually shifts its focus to the individual, in a dizzying spiral, beating to the rhythm of the alcohol and music at a carefree wedding party. It is a political film about party apparatus, but also a film about friendship, love and betrayal. The film sticks closely to the characters’ bodies, their bodies irreparably destroyed by that night in April.

The White Iris Award for Best First Feature went to Danish helmer Mikkel Munch-Fals’s Nothing’s All Bad [+see also:
trailer
film profile], a raw film about love, sex and loneliness. Meanwhile, Best Screenplay went to Norwegian director Anne Sewitsky’s more light-hearted Happy, Happy [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which won an award at Sundance.

The RTBF and BeTv awards were both presented to French flick Holidays by the Sea [+see also:
trailer
interview: Denis Delcampe
interview: Pascal Rabaté
film profile], the second feature by director and comic book author Pascal Rabaté.

Meanwhile, viewers were unable to resist the shining humanity of Irish actor Colm Meaney, giving their Audience Award to the film in which he stars: Darragh Byrne’s Parked [+see also:
trailer
interview: Darragh Byrne
film profile].

Finally, the Cineuropa Award was given to A Quiet Life [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Claudio Cupellini
film profile] by Claudio Cupellini (see video interview), for “its profoundly European themes (immigration, integration, identity) blended with themes from a more universal and recognisable genre cinema; for the significant use of an array of languages in defining its characters; and for the inspired and almost essential casting of Toni Servillo in the lead role”.

(Translated from French)