01/12/2025 - Amin Motallebzadeh’s debut feature has clinched the Best Film Award at the gathering, while The Shards by Masha Chernaya picked up two Special Mentions

Director Amin Motallebzadeh with his award for Conference of the Birds (© Bruto Studio)

After several hours of debate, which took place in front of the audience itself, the Official Section jury of the Lanzarote Film Festival unanimously named Conference of the Birds [+see also:
film review
film profile] Best Film of the 15th edition (20-30 November) last Saturday. That same day, during the closing ceremony, its director, Amin Motallebzadeh, accepted the award.

The jury – made up of Argentinian critic, programmer and filmmaker Lucía Salas; Catalan writer, lecturer and critic Violeta Kovacsics; and Canarian poet Antonio Martín Medina – granted it the festival’s top accolade because “at a time of literal statements, it presents itself as an enigma, one that is suggestive and sensual. It takes football as a framework in order to settle into a state of mind and into a void, into the fascinating interstices of language, and to reveal the spaces that aren’t seen, between the word and what it is, between one language and another."

Meanwhile, the Georgian-German co-production The Shards [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Masha Chernaya
film profile], directed by Masha Chernaya, received a Special Mention for “making visible, at a time of extreme visibility, what cannot be seen. For answering the question of what a nation is with a witty, fragmentary, off-kilter, dislocated structure, like a dance in the face of the end of the world, and above all, for building a subjectivity that tirelessly seeks out the collective, coining a new ‘us’ for a tough world, who can pause to recount what it means to live and die today”.

In the Cruce de caminos: Cineastas de Canarias short-film section, the winner was Inmaculada by Amos Milbor. The jury chose it “for incorporating diverse elements (football, popular religiousness and art history) to convey the contrast between a hypermodern Canary Islands and wry local customs bound to tradition”.

Meanwhile, the members of the Young Jury named the documentary With Hasan en Gaza [+see also:
film review
interview: Kamal Aljafari
film profile] by Kamal Aljafari (winner of last year’s edition of this showcase with A Fidai Film [+see also:
film review
interview: Kamal Aljafari
film profile]) as the best film in the Official Section, praising it for “its defence of images as an exercise in resistance and against oblivion. And for its different way of presenting tragedy and for managing to lend meaning to its own archival material through sound.” The same jury also handed its Special Mention to the aforementioned The Shards.

Lastly, the director of the Lanzarote Film Festival and president of Tenique Cultural, Javier Fuentes Feo, highlighted during the closing ceremony, “Once again, the deliberation has shown that this kind of event is of broad interest, as it is a public reflection on, and an in-depth analysis of, what cinema is today.”

Here is the full list of award winners:

Best Film
Conference of the Birds [+see also:
film review
film profile] - Amin Motallebzadehm (Germany)

Special Mention
The Shards [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Masha Chernaya
film profile] - Masha Chernaya (Georgia/Germany)

Young Jury Award
With Hasan en Gaza [+see also:
film review
interview: Kamal Aljafari
film profile] - Kamal Aljafari (Palestine/Germany/France/Qatar)

Special Mention
The Shards - Masha Chernaya

Best Short Film Cruce de caminos: Cineastas canarios
Inmaculada - Amos Milbor (Spain)

(Translated from Spanish)