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POPOLI 2020 Awards

This Rain Will Never Stop named Best Feature at the Festival dei Popoli

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- Ukrainian director Alina Gorlova has triumphed in the international competition of the 61st Florence documentary festival, while Duccio Chiarini’s L’occhio di vetro was named Best Italian Documentary

This Rain Will Never Stop named Best Feature at the Festival dei Popoli
This Rain Will Never Stop by Alina Gorlova

This Rain Will Never Stop [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alina Gorlova
film profile
]
from Ukrainian director Alina Gorlova and The Glass Eye [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
 from Italian filmmaker Duccio Chiarini are the winners of the 61st edition of the Festival dei Popoli, the Florence documentary film festival which this year, because of the Covid pandemic, took place entirely online (from 15 to 22 November - read the news) and for the first time under the artistic director of Alessandro Stellino (read our interview).

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Alina Gorlova's film, which tells the story of the young Kurd Andriy travelling between his native Syria and Ukraine, two countries equally marked by bloody wars that split families, was named Best Feature Film in the International Competition, winning a prize of €8,000. The jury composed of Joëlle Bertossa (Switzerland), Maria Bonsanti (Italy) and Andrei Ujica (Romania) chose This Rain Will Never Stop because “it describes the dark aura of this place tortured by history [Ukraine], using powerful black and white images reminiscent of the great school of Soviet non-fiction cinema.”

Meanwhile, the jury composed of Marta Donzelli, Maria Letizia Gatti and Alessandro Raja gave the Best Italian Documentary Award to L’occhio di vetro, in which director Duccio Chiarini retraces Italian history, starting from the First World War as it was experienced by his grandparents and distant relatives. The jury chose this film because it is “a courageous film that delves into an uncomfortable and submerged family history, [...] an intimate and moving diary in search of a perhaps impossible understanding of one of the darkest pages in the history of Italy.” The film also won the Theatrical Distribution Award “Il Cinemino”, handed out by the Milanese cinema to the work that best embodies commitment, social and linguistically innovative values, because “starting from a personal story, it tells the story of all of Italy, of our shame and of what we have tried to hide”.

Also worth noting among the winners of the 2020 edition is the CG Digital Distribution on Demand Award for the Best European Film, which gives the winning film the opportunity to be distributed on demand on the platform cgdigital.it, and which was handed out to Polish film The Whale from Lorino [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Maciej Cuske, about the controversial practice of whaling in northeast Siberia; the Tënk Award, given by the SVOD platform dedicated to independent European documentary cinema to the Italy/Bulgaria production Il libro di Giona by Zlatolin Donchev, which explores the life of a man who lives in his own car and leads an existence made of books, photographs and dreams.

Here is the list of award winners:

Best Feature-length Documentary
This Rain Will Never Stop [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alina Gorlova
film profile
]
- Alina Gorlova (Ukraine/Latvia/Germany/Qatar)

Best Mid-length Documentary
Pyrale - Roxanne Gaucherand (France/Belgium)

Best Short Documentary
Bubble - Eleanor Mortimer (UK)

Best Italian Documentary Award
The Glass Eye [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
- Duccio Chiarini (Italy)
Special Mention
Bosco - Alicia Cano Menoni (Italy/Uruguay)

Theatrical Distribution Award “Il Cinemino”
L’occhio di vetro - Duccio Chiarini

Best Anthropological Film: "Gian Paolo Paoli" Award 
Apiyemiyekî - Ana Vaz (Portugal/Brazil/France/Netherlands)

Home Video Distribution Award  “POPOLI Doc”
L'Île des Perdus - Laura Lamanda (Italy/France)

CG Digital on demand distribution award for Best European Film
The Whale from Lorino [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Maciej Cuske (Poland)

Theatrical Distribution Award “Imperdibili”
L'Île des Perdus - Laura Lamanda

Tënk Award
Il libro di Giona - Zlatolin Donchev (Italy/Bulgaria)

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(Translated from Italian)

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