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The Fixer pockets the Grand Pix in Oslo

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- Norway’s new Oslo Pix international film festival recorded more than 12,000 admissions for its first six-day programme, comprising 70 films from 20 countries

The Fixer pockets the Grand Pix in Oslo
The Fixer by Adrian Sitaru

Romanian director Adrian Sitaru’s sixth feature, The Fixer [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adrian Sitaru
interview: Tudor Aaron Istodor
film profile
]
, won the Grand Pix top prize when Oslo’s new international film festival, Oslo Pix, wrapped its first six-day programme yesterday (13 June) with the awards ceremony at Oslo’s (and Nordisk Film’s) Saga cinema, which together with the Klingenberg cinema served as the festival’s headquarters.

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Starring Tudor IstodorMehdi Nebbou and Nicolas WanczyckiThe Fixer follows a Romanian trainee at a French news agency, who sees the chance to make a scoop when two Romanian underage prostitutes are expatriated from France – but the job turns out to be more complicated, and more morally dubious, than he was able to foresee. “The film stands out by not satisfying the spectators’ need to have their own moral point of view confirmed. It raises questions, but does not try to formulate answers, nor does it claim to possess them. As we move closer to the core of the story, and the story moves closer to us, what initially seems like a clear-cut work becomes more complex and ambiguous, and deeply human in its refusal to postulate clear moral truths,” said the jury, consisting of Norwegian cinematographer-composer Kim Hiorthøy, author Roskva Koritzinsky and actress-director Trine Wiggen.

Organised by the Nordisk Film Kino cinema chain, the Oslo Festival Agency and the Films from the South Organisation, with Susann Østigaard serving as acting manager and Cato Fossum as programme director, the first Oslo Pix recorded more than 12,000 admissions to its selection of films hailing mainly from Europe and North America, with a special focus on the Nordic countries.

Polish director Anna Zamecka's feature debut, Communion [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, was awarded the Grand Pix for Best Documentary. The winner of the Critics’ Week at the Locarno International Film Festival last year was shot over a period of 35 days in a single house, describing an unorthodox, fractured family in the build-up to a religious event. Fed up with her husband’s alcoholism, mother Magda has left the scene, also leaving behind autistic Nikodem and 14-year-old Ola, the most mature and competent individual on view, who is growing up fast, forced to take over household responsibilities. 

The Audience Award went to Norwegian director Charlotte Røhder Tvedt’s Between Us, the first Norwegian documentary made from crowd-sourced videos. In the spring of 2016, Tvedt asked Norwegians to film their world, and more than 900 submitted their results, be they dramatic or trivial: a girl is bullied, another girl misses her father, who is in a foreign country, and a man cries in his car on the way to work. Explaining what she wanted to explore, she said: “We live in a time where we share more and more about ourselves on social media, but are we really getting any closer to each other?” 

Here is the full list of Oslo Pix award winners:

Grand Pix Fiction
The Fixer [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adrian Sitaru
interview: Tudor Aaron Istodor
film profile
]
 - Adrian Sitaru (Romania/France)
Honourable Mention
God’s Own Country [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Francis Lee
film profile
]
– Francis Lee (UK) 

Grand Pix Documentary
Communion [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Anna Zamecka (Poland)
Honourable Mention
I Am Not Your Negro [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 – Raoul Peck (France/USA/Belgium/Switzerland)

Audience Award
Between Us - Charlotte Rødher Tvedt (Norway)

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