Whilst it was the Japanese film Disaster by Yutaro Seki and Kentaro Hirase (screened in competition at San Sebastián last year) that dominated the 6th edition of the Reims Polar International Thriller Film Festival, winning the Grand Prize and also winning over the Police jury, European productions secured some of the top spots in the awards list. Winter of the Crow by Poland’s Kasia Adamik won both the Jury Prize in the main competition (chaired by Emmanuelle Devos, supported by Ophélie Bau, Mathieu Demy, Delphine Gleize, Thierry Klifa, Grégory Montel and Alix Poisson) and the Critics’ Award. Unveiled at the Toronto Platform before being screened out of competition in San Sebastián, Winter of the Crow is set in Warsaw in 1981, when martial law is imposed overnight, effectively sealing off the country. It follows a British psychiatry professor who witnesses a murder carried out by the secret police and becomes a hunted fugitive. The film will be released in French cinemas by Condor Distribution.

For its part, the audience awarded the prize to Red Code Blue, the second feature film by Latvian director Oskars Rupenheits, who recently won five Lielais Kristaps (his country’s annual film awards). Having screened at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, the film is set in the mid-1990s and follows a young police inspector assigned to a station in Riga, who soon comes up against a harsh reality: to fight crime, one must sometimes bend the rules.

Finally, in the New Blood competition (whose jury was chaired by Eye Haïdara, alongside Peter Dourountzis, Marc Ruchmann, Lawrence Valin and Anja Verderosa), the winner was Father by Slovakian director Tereza Nvotová (a film unveiled in Venice’s Orizzonti section), whilst the Youth Jury awarded the prize to the Hungarian debut feature Growing Down by Bálint Dániel Sós (a film unveiled in Berlinale Perspectives).

The winners:

Grand Prize
Disaster - Yutaro Seki and Kentaro Hirase (Japan)

Jury Prize
Winter of the Crow - Kasia Adamik (Poland/UK/Luxembourg)

Police Prize
Disaster - Yutaro Seki and Kentaro Hirase 

Critics’ Prize
Winter of the Crow - Kasia Adamik

Audience Award
Red Code Blue - Oskars Rupenheits (Latvia)

New Blood Award
Father - Tereza Nvotová (Slovakia/Czech Republic/Poland)

Great East Region – New Blood Youth Jury Award
Growing Down - Bálint Dániel Sós (Hungary)