One title stood out among the list of winners at the 38th Mostra de València – Cinema del Mediterrani, announced at the closing gala on Saturday 28th October. The Lebanese Riverbed, by Bassem Breche, winner of the Golden Palm for Best Film, as well as Best Cinematography (for Nadim Saoma) and Best Soundtrack (for Sharif Senhaoui).

The film’s "visual poetry" made it a worthy winner of these awards. According to the jury made up of Maria Hatzakou, Diana Al-Halabi, Fatma Cherif and Michela Occhipinti, uniting "two different temporalities and the fact that the interior and exterior spaces become as strong a character as the two main actresses, make this film explain in an unexpected way a story about being a woman, motherhood and the rejection of this within social constructs". The film has won the main prize of 30,000 euros for production and 15,000 euros for Spanish distribution.

It was following by the Portuguese-French co-production Cidade Rabat [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], by Susana Nobre, which won the Silver Palm (20,000 euros). The film moved the jury for its treatment of "loss, loneliness and femininity, as well as for its tender portrayal of a woman's everyday life through unpretentious and delicate mise-en-scène". And the Moroccan film Deserts [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Faouzi Bensaïdi
scheda film], a comedy with mystical touches that condemns the abandonment of the villages of southern Morocco, won the Best Director award for Faouzi Bensaïdi and Best Actor, ex-aequo for its two leading actors, Fehd Benchemsi and Abdelhadi Talbi.

The award for Best Actress went to Claudia Faci, the absolute star of Marina, Unplugged [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], the Valencian film directed by Alfonso Amador that delves into the rhetoric of the extreme right. The award for Best Script went to Vladimir Perišić and Alice Winocour for Lost Country [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Vladimir Perišić
scheda film], a film set in Belgrade in 1996, during an election campaign that Milošević's party unexpectedly lost.

Outside the Official Selection, in the Informative Section, the main prize (the À Punt Audience Award, which includes the purchasing of the feature film’s broadcasting rights by this public channel) went to Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Cyril Aris
scheda film]. A documentary by Cyril Aris that tells the complex situation faced by the film crew of the film Costa Brava, Lebanon [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (also screened at the festival), when an explosion occurred in the port of Beirut just as production was about to begin in the middle of the pandemic.

The list of awards:

Golden Palm
Riverbed – Bassem Breche (Lebanon)

Silver Palm
Cidade Rabat [+leggi anche:
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Best Director
Faozi Bensaïdi – Deserts [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Faouzi Bensaïdi
scheda film] (France/Germany/Morocco/Belgium)

Best Script
Vladimir Perišić, Alice Winocour – Lost Country [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Vladimir Perišić
scheda film] (Serbia/France/Croatia/Luxembourg)

Best Actress
Claudia Faci – Marina, Unplugged [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (Spain)

Best Actor
Fehd Benchemsi, Abdelhadi Talbi – Deserts

Best Cinematography
Nadim Saoma – Riverbed

Best Soundtrack
Sharif Senhaoui - Riverbed

À Punt Audience Award
Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Cyril Aris
scheda film] – Cyril Aris (Lebanon/Germany)