We present the winners of the 21st International Film Festival of Kerala that took place from December 9th – 16th, in Thiruvananthapuram, India.
NETPAC Award
Best Asian Film
Cold of Kalandar by Mustafa Kara – Turkey, Hungary | 2015 – 134 min.
Mehmet is a man living with his family in a mountain village in the Black Sea region. He earns his life breeding a few animals, while passionately looking for a mineral reserve on the mountains, but his pursuit is seen useless by his family. Devastated by vain efforts, his hope is renewed with a competition. Mehmet will attend the bull fight held in Artvin, but he returns from Artvin completely lost, once again. This simple story pictures the naive portrait of a touching life, a life struggle in hardship and the relationship between nature, animals and human beings.
Best Malayalam Film
Kammatipaadam by Rajeev Ravi – India | 2016 – 177 min.
A city with a serene past, turned into a concrete jungle through violence & deceit is “Kammatipaadam”. Krishnan, now a security officer in Mumbai returns to Kochi after receiving a distress call from his childhood friend Ganga. He recalls his past on how manipulative forces used & discarded inhabitants of Kochi.
The friendship of a middle-class boy Krishnan with Ganga & his family, forms the crux of this movie & are exposed to violence at young age. Inspired by the heroics & manliness of Ganga’s elder brother Balettan, Krishnan & his gang indulge in unlawful activities as they grow up. Krishnan turns into an outlaw by murdering a policeman in his adolescence. Balettan argues with his grandfather over his deeds & complains his forefathers’ ideologies being useless. The film urges to question the false image of development which trivialised traditional values & beliefs held by Dalits, creating a disoriented generation from the Dalit community, who were manoeuvred to violence by the rich.
FIPRESCI Award
Best International Film
Warehoused (Almacenadso) by Jack Zagha – Mexico | 2016 – 95 min.
After working for 39 years in the Salvaleon warehouse, Mr. Lino is preparing for retirement. He spends the last five days at work training Nin, his replacement. Despite Mr. Lin’s specific explanations, Nin realises that hardly anything ever happens in the quiet building. As time goes by, rigorously cadenced by meaningless tasks and uncomfortable silences, the maladjusted pair overcome their generational conflict and develop a unique bond over the weight of one great lie.
Best Malayalam Film
Manhole by Vidhu Vincent – India | 2016 – 85 min.
Shalini is the daughter of Ayya Swami, manual scavenger, and Pappathi who is a housemaid. She tries to hide her caste background to avoid social exclusion among her friends in the school. She tries to pressure her father to give up the work he is doing, but fails as his vocational options are circumscribed by his caste identity. Her father’s death in an accident while he was working in the manhole reveals her identity to her friends. She finds it hard to face social antipathy towards her because of her family’s social and caste background. After the death of her father, the burden of running the family falls on her mother. Shalini also starts to work in the local super market as a shop floor assistant. She manages to pass the entrance exam to do a graduate course in Law. Her friend Marimuth, also engaged in manual scavenging to support his studies, faces the same fate as her father while doing his final year. It shakes her faith in the course she has followed in life and she decides to fight against the no exit situation in which those engaged in scavenging are caught in.
Special Mention
Die Beautiful by Jun Robles Lana – Philippines | 2016 – 120 min.
Trisha, a transgender woman who makes a living as a beauty contestant, dies unexpectedly. Before she died, her one last wish was to remain beautiful even in death. This moving work, filled with laughs, is the latest effort by Jun Robles Lana.
Trisha, a Filipino transgender woman, suddenly dies while being crowned in a beauty pageant. Her last wish was to be presented as a different celebrity on each night of her wake, but her conservative father wants to bury her as a man. Trisha’s friends are left with no choice but to steal her body and hold the wake in a secret location. And as Trisha is transformed to look like different celebrities, they also look back at the colorful and extraordinary life that she has led – being a son, a sister, a mother, a friend, a lover, a wife, and ultimately, a queen.
Ecemu Uzun for Clair Obscur (Yesim Ustaoglu) – Turkey, Germany, Poland, France | 2016 – 105 min.
Clair-Obscur is the psychological dance of two women who are deprived of and distanced from their natural right to mature and discover themselves, to love and be loved, and to sustain a real relationship of their choosing. The social cost of these psychological wounds reverberates from micro- to macro-levels throughout society, rotting it from within.
Rajatha Chakoram for the Best Debut Director
Manhole by Vidhu Vincent – India | 2016 – 85 min.
Rajatha Chakoram for the Best Director
Yesim Ustaoglu for Clair Obscur (Tereddut) – Turkey, Germany, Poland, France | 2016 – 105 min.
Suwarna Chakoram for the Best Film
Clash (Eshtebak) by Mohamed Diab – Egypt | 2016 – 97 min.
Cairo, summer of 2013 – two years after the Egyptian revolution. In the wake of the ouster of Islamist president Morsi, a police truck full of detained demonstrators of divergent political and religious backgrounds roams through violent protests. Can the detainees overcome their differences to stand a chance of survival?
Audience Award
Clash (Eshtebak) by Mohamed Diab – Egypt | 2016 – 97 min.
To know more about this festival please visit the FESTIVAL PROFILE or go to the official webpage of the festival HERE.
Categories: Awards
Asian Film Festivals 