A total of twenty-one trophies were handed out at the awards ceremony marking the close of this year’s TorinoFilmLab’s 18th Meeting Event, a record tally for this most well-attended edition in the gathering’s history. Capping three days jam-packed with meetings and pitches which brought together 400 audiovisual professionals from 41 countries (48 projects spanning films and TV series were presented and 890 one-to-one meetings were held in just 9 hours), many of the 113 screenwriters, directors and producers who’d spent the past year developing their future works under the guidance of TFL tutors saw their efforts rewarded with cash prizes - partly thanks to contributions made by international partners - and doors opening up to new opportunities and collaborations.

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The ceremony also officially awarded the TFL Co-Production Fund (consisting of €50,000, thanks to support from the Creative Europe MEDIA programme) to Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s 9 Temples to Heaven (Thailand), produced by Thai outfit Kick the Machine Films (Kissada Kamyoung, Apichatpong Weerasethakul) in co-production with E&W Films (Singapore) and Petit Chaos (France).

The first of the four TFL Production Awards (each worth €50,000 and whose winners were selected from among the FeatureLab projects) handed out by the jury composed of Thania Dimitrakopoulou, Mo Harawe, Dorota Lech and Andrea Occhipinti, went to a Dominican Republic project called La Canícula, by Rod Llaverías, which sees the return of an aunt and the arrival of a young treasure hunter forcing Ciro - a middle-aged man confined to his childhood home - to reconcile his repressed desires with family duty, jeopardising the fragile balance of silence he’s always maintained.

The other three production prizes were won by Lucky Girl (France/Senegal), coming courtesy of Linda Lô and telling the story of an African girl who creates inner alter egos in order to cope with reality and fulfil her mother’s dreams; The Passions of Angela Simmons (United States) by Lucy Kerr, in which a grieving former dancer seeks transcendence through the rituals involved in her imminent debutante ball, and Three Ages (Spain) by Jiajie Yu Yan, which sees a seven-year-old Chinese boy reunited with his parents in Barcelona.

As for the other TFL prizes, the jury composed of Mignon Huisman, Sophie Taylor-Gooby and Iñigo Trojaola awarded the SeriesLab Development Awards (each worth €10,000) to Maja Costa’s Connection Lost (Italy/Germany), which tells the story of Adriano’s brilliant daughter Lia Olivetti, who finds herself caught up in an international intrigue during the Cold War, and to Emmanuelle Kesch and Mauricio Cuffaro’s Madre Mia (Peru/Spain), in which a middle-aged beautician is forced to team up with a frustrated writer in order to find her missing son before it's too late. The jury also awarded a Special Mention to Lars Damoiseaux’s animated series project Buffalo Johansson (Belgium/Netherlands).

The winner of the ComedyLab Award (worth €10,000) was Berthold Wahjudi’s project, A Summer Tale (Germany), in which a German-Indonesian thirteen-year-old faces off with a new rival for the title of funniest Asian kid in the class. 

The awards ceremony also provided an opportunity to announce the winners of the Alumni Grant, a special prize created to celebrate TFL’s 18th birthday which is geared towards filmmakers who have previously taken part in TorinoFilmLab programmes and and which offers them further support to advance their projects and careers. The winners were Nightsong (Brazil/France) by Maya Da-Rin, who previously took part in TFL with The Fever [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Maya Da-Rin
fiche film], and Soon We Will All Be History Here (United Kingdom/Palestine/Malta) by Saeed Taji Farouky, who participated in 2021’s ScriptLab with the same project.

Among the gathering’s partner-awarded prizes, the Eurimages Co-Production Development Prize (worth €20,000), aimed at encouraging international co-production, was awarded by jurors Carole Baraton, Emma Scott and Radu Stancu to David Gašo’s ScriptLab project History of Illness (Croatia), in which the protagonist’s desire to understand his tic turns into a surreal experience inside a hospital under renovation.

And, last but not least, a specially appointed jury composed of Alejandro Arenas Azorín, Ava Cahen and Urte Fink awarded the CNC PRIZE - consisting of €8,000 put forward by France’s National Film Centre - to María Belén Poncio’s ScriptLab project, Chosen City (Argentina), with a Special Mention also going to Shalini Adnani’s Hold Still (United Kingdom/Chile).

The full list of winners at the 18th TFL Meeting Event were as follows:

TFL Production Awards
La Canícula - Rod Llaverías (Dominican Republic)
Producer: Wendy Espinal (Centuria)

Lucky Girl - Linda Lô (France/Senegal)
Producer: Didar Domehri (Maneki Films)

The Passions of Angela Simmons - Lucy Kerr (USA)
Producer: Megan Pickrell (Conjuring Productions)

Three Ages - Jiajie Yu Yan (Spain)
Producer: César Esteban Alenda (Solita Films)

SeriesLab Development Awards
Connection Lost (Italy/Germany)
Creators: Maja Costa, Melina Voss

Madre Mia (Peru/Spain)
Creators: Emmanuelle Kesch, Mauricio Cuffaro
Producer: Francisco Carrasco

SeriesLab Special Mention
Buffalo Johansson (Belgium/Netherlands)
Creator: Lars Damoiseaux
Producer: David Vermander

ComedyLab Award
A Summer Tale - Berthold Wahjudi (Germany)

Alumni Grant Award
Nightsong - Maya Da-Rin (Brazil/France)
Producer: Juliette Lepoutre (Still Moving)

Soon We Will All Be History Here - Saeed Taji Farouky (UK/Palestine/Malta)
Producer: Maria Caruana Galizia

TFL Co-Production Fund
9 Temples to Heaven - Sompot Chidgasornpongse (Thailand/Singapore/France)
Producers: Kick the Machine Films (Kissada Kamyoung, Apichatpong Weerasethakul), E&W Films, Petit Chaos

Partner awards

Eurimages Co-Production Development Award
History of Illness - David Gašo (Croatia)

CNC Award
Chosen City - María Belén Poncio (Argentina)
Special Mention
Hold Still - Shalini Adnani (UK/Chile)

ArteKino International Award
Black Hairy Beast - Anna Hints and Tushar Prakash (Estonia/India)

Sub-Ti Award
Culebra Cut - Ana Elena Tejera and Tomás Cortés (Panama)

Sub-Ti Access Award
The Passions of Angela Simmons - Lucy Kerr

IEFTA Award
Hold Me (If You Want) - Mounia Akl (Lebanon)

Post-Production Award
Cold Ashes Can Cause Forest Fires - Ashmita Guha Neog (India/France)

Green awards

TFL White Mirror
Grasshopper - Micah Magee (Denmark/USA)

Green Filming Awards
Women Walking - Kerren Lumer-Klabbers (Denmark/Norway)
To Leave, To Stay - Danech San (Cambodia/USA/Italy)
Lucky Girl - Linda Lô