Protocol of Prizes in the 26th International Film Festival November 5 – 7, 2020 Košice, Slovakia

Grand Prix Golden Beggar Award for Local Television 

‘I need the Handshakes’ by Andrei Kutsila, Polish/Belarus production. A mother & daughter story, a story about love and duty:  92yr-old Valiantsina  lives in a remote village with her paralysed daughter, Tacciana.                                                                                                                         Tacciana… Tanya… is an artist and a poet, but how does she use her brushes, pencils and pens…? Amazingly, Valiantsina is her archivist, as well as her carer.

Grand Prix Golden Beggar Award for Production Company

 ‘The Saverini Widow’  by Loïc Gaillard from France. In the south of Corsica, across the dangerous Straights of Bonifacio from Sardinia, the widow Saverini lives with her son and her dog. The local midwife, she lives a calm, tranquil life.  Until her son is killed… and she becomes an avenging angel seeking vengeance, no matter what the cost…

Grand Prix Golden Beggar Award for Young Author

‘Day Release’ directed by Martin Winter, Austria .  Kathi is on day release from prison, to visit her son, who lives with his grandmother. How can she arrange a more hopeful life for the 3yr-old boy? How to build bridges with her mother or with the boy’s father? Her day release runs out at 6pm.

Award of the Association of Serbian Journalists Zora

‘The Invisible Line – American Nazi Experiment’ by Emanuel Rotstein was coproduced by the German History Channel. ’The Third Wave’ was an educational experiment in 1967 by US high school teacher Ron Jones, who succeeded in creating a mimi fascist state on campus. Rotstein revisits Ron Jones and his wife as well as former colleagues and Third Wave students. There’s strong evidence that movement towards Fascism is happening in various societies around the world today…

Children’s Jury Award for the best Animation (up to 30 minutes)

‘Thatching Eggs’ by Max Marlow from the United Kingdom  won the Children’s Jury Award for the best Animation (up to 30 minutes). When a bird  flies away and leaves her eggs alone in the nest, they find they have unexpected friends and protectors in the city.

Honorary mentions

’Mum’s The Word’ by Colin Scheyen from Canada, an interactive documentary, where the audience can research the history of how unmarried mothers were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption by churches and social services. In the past 75yrs, approximately 350,000 mothers were separated from their children. A compelling story, very well researched.

The Next One directed by Dominik György, from Kosice, studying at FAMU in Prague, the Czech Republic. With excellent camera-work and lighting, we join a production line of girls waiting to have abortions. Hope, fear, degradation, panic…

‘Hope’ directed by Vjosa Abazi from Kosovo tells the harrowing stories of 4 desperately and disparately unfortunate women who, against all the odds, still have Hope and this is enough to encourage them to look to the future… and to explain to us how… and why.

‘Morning’ + ‘Retired’ both directed by Vojtěch Domlátil,  Czech Republic, are interesting mixtures of different kinds of animation and pastoral documentary, each form of filmmaking enhancing the other. He shows us that all attempts at filmmaking are valid and that there need be no separation between one kind and another.

“Eaten’ directed by Mohsen Rezapour from Iran. A surreal voyage into the outside of the inside, over and over again. An animated film with a logic all of its own, where you might be safer inside rather than outside. Until you end up inside again. And so, as infinitum. As so many of us say about relationships: “It’s complicated”.

‘Loo-Loo-Loo-Loo’ by Predrag Todorović from Serbia.  Folklore is a law unto itself. In rural Serbia, women spending time out on the hills with their herds of sheep, entertain themselves and each other by a very special kind of mouth music: sometimes with words, often without. How is this tradition passed down from generation to generation?

Roger Worrod – Head of the Jury

November 7th, 2020

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