The four main prizes at this year’s BFI London Film Festival went to films fresh in their release journeys, which audiences will still be excited to discover over the coming months. With the autumn bash in the UK’s capital enjoying its 67th edition – the first at the helm for new director Kirsty Matheson – the awards themselves were doled out yesterday afternoon at an informal ceremony, with the filmmakers largely giving thanks through video messages. Since 2009, a Best Film Award and an official competition of around a dozen films have been set up, coupled with its First Feature and Documentary Awards, which had existed for decades previous and served to boost the careers of countless filmmakers, including Andrea Arnold, Julia Ducournau and Joanna Hogg.

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After he closely missed winning the Golden Lion at Venice, as hearsay states it, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi added to his bulging trophy cabinet, with his wonderful Evil Does Not Exist winning Best Film. An environmentalist drama about a small woodland community resisting a new “glamping” development, its violent, enigmatic final minutes have been some of the most unsettling and talked about in the arthouse world since Michael Haneke’s Hidden [+lee también:
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entrevista: Margaret Menegoz
entrevista: Michael Haneke
ficha de la película]. The jury, headed up by director Amat Escalante, and also composed of curator Kate Taylor and novelist Niven Govinden, commended an “assured drama [that] supersedes the sum of its parts; a lyrical portrait of family and community, and a nuanced consideration of the ethics of land development”.

Also a prizewinner at the last Venice, having garnered the Best Director Award in Orizzonti, Mika Gustafson’s Paradise Is Burning [+lee también:
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entrevista: Mika Gustafson
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Bye Bye Tiberias [+lee también:
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Here is the full list of award winners:

Best Film Award in Official Competition
Evil Does Not Exist - Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Japan)

Sutherland Award in the First Feature Competition
Paradise Is Burning [+lee también:
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entrevista: Mika Gustafson
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Grierson Award in the Documentary Competition
Bye Bye Tiberias [+lee también:
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entrevista: Lina Soualem
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Short Film Award
The Archive: Queer Nigerians - Simisolaoluwa Akande (UK)