17/12/2024 - Thom Lunshof’s debut feature scooped the TitraFilm Prize, while other trophies were won by Jaume Claret Muxart’s Strange Rivers, Maxence Voiseux’s Gabin, and Janicke Askevold’s Solomamma

First Zone director Thom Lunshof, alongside producer Marrit Greidanus and co-writer Sam Dijkstra, with their TitraFilm award (© Claire Nicol/Les Arcs Film Festival)

Unspooling within the 16th Les Arcs Film Festival’s Industry Village, the Work in Progress sidebar, showcasing 12 feature films in competition, has delivered its verdict by way of three prizes.

The main jury (comprising Beatrice Fiorentino, Hrönn Marinósdóttir and Ivo Andrle) awarded the TitraFilm Prize (consisting of 10,000 euros’ worth of post-production services) to First Zone, Dutch director Thom Lunshof’s first feature film. Written by the filmmaker in league with Sam Dijkstra, the story takes us to a future world where the Netherlands are flooded. A hardened woman is torn away from her desolate home - a lone wind turbine - by a violent storm. As she fights to return home, she starts to wonder whether the place she once called home still holds any meaning for her…

The jury crowned First Zone its winner" for its capacity to transpose present worries into a possible future, while exploring a vast, realist yet abstract, cinematographic space and while sidestepping the pitfalls of didacticism and the trappings of genre film. As he reworks western film codes, the director successfully creates a work which resonates with the modern-day, whilst also conserving a universal and timeless expressive force."

The Alphapanda Audience Engagement Prize (revolving around digital marketing for the film and endowed with 6,000 euros’ worth of services) was won by Strange River, which is Spanish director Jaume Claret Muxart’s first feature film. Penned by the filmmaker in league with Meritxell Colell Aparicio (who was selected in the Berlinale Forum via her first film Facing the Wind [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]), the story follows 15-year-old Dídac who’s cycling along the Danube with his family. But something within him begins to change when he meets a mysterious 18-year-old boy...

An Alphapanda Special Mention, meanwhile, was awarded to the only documentary presented in the Work in Progress section: Gabin, French director Maxence Voiseux’s debut feature film, which observes a boy over the course of 10 years, who’s torn between family loyalty and his yearning for freedom, and who battles to break away from his working-class background in France’s rural North.

Last but not least, the 22D Music Prize (endowed with 10,000 euros to fund an original film score, and whose jury notably included Icelandic composer Atli Örvarsson, and Fionnuala Jamison who heads up international sales at mk2) was awarded to Solomamma by Norway’s Janicke Askevold. Scripted by Jørgen Faerøy Flanes and Mads Stegger, the film revolves around 40-year-old Nora who becomes a single mother thanks to a sperm donor, but who struggles with solo parenting. When she finds out her donor’s identity, she reaches out to him, setting off a chain reaction with unexpected consequences...

The full list of awards is as follows:

TitraFilm Prize
First Zone - Thom Lunshof
Production: Marrit Greidanus (Makaki Productions) (the Netherlands)

Alphapanda Audience Engagement Prize
Strange River - Jaume Claret Muxart
Production: Xavi Font (ZuZú Cinema) (Spain), Miramemira (Spain), Schuldenberg Films GmbH (Germany)
Special Mention
Gabin - Maxence Voiseux
Production: Alter Ego Production (France), AMA FILM (Germany), Rita Productions (Switzerland)

22D Music Prize
Solomamma - Janicke Askevold
Production: Bacon Pictures Oslo (Norway), Bacon Pictures Copenhagen (Denmark), Mistrus Media (Latvia), Dansu Films (Lithuania), It's Alive (Finland)

(Translated from French)