There are only five weeks left until this year’s 27th edition of Doc Alliance member FIDMarseille. The sun-drenched seaport will then raise its red-and-white festival flags and offer international audiences refuge in air-conditioned cinemas. However, as always, FID Marseille will offer anything but simple respite, presenting instead a wealth of artistically and critically challenging new documentaries. Before meeting the new stars of the Cote d’Azur, from June 6 – 19 join us to celebrate the festival winners of FIDMarseille 2015!
Although the port of Marseilles is filled with a thousand colours and scents and offers visitors beauty and adventure in its own right, in the week of July 12 – 18 its main attraction will be the 27th edition of FIDMarseille. Under the traditional leadership of its artistic director, Jean-Pierre Rehm, the festival will present more than 130 new films, including a special focus on the work of Korean director Hong Song-soo, to whom they dedicated the main retrospective section, along with accompanying Q&A sessions and a masterclass by the director. Apart from an extensive film program, the festival will also offer its flagship FIDLab and FIDCampus programs. The 8th edition of FIDLab will present an award to the makers of one of eleven selected films, to which the festival offers an intensive project development course under the supervision of leading world specialists. The FIDCampus platform offers a long-term focus on students of Mediterranean film schools, providing a unique educational opportunity and special attention to their first professional projects.
But before the 27th edition of FID Marseille begins, let us revisit the eleven films that won prestigious prizes in the high-quality competition in 2015. The highest prize, the main prize of the international competition, was awarded to the impressionistic ENTRELAZADO by Riccardo Giacconi. While during the course of a day one generally will see a myriad of fragmented impressions, Giacconi’s camera has the uncanny ability to find connections between the most marginal manifestations of life, conjuring up lines of thought that border on an experimental scientific perspective on everyday reality. The main prize in the domestic French competition last year went to Hassen Ferhani, whose film ROUNDABOUT IN MY HEAD explores Algerian abattoirs. Instead of scenes of bloodshed, the setting serves as a theatrical stage, a backdrop that allows viewers to observe the specific male universe of the characters that inhabit such places.
In 2015, two festival prizes for debut films helped start the successful festival runs of two projects. The main prize went to German filmmaker Alexandra Gerbaulet for her medium-length SHIFT. The comic perspective of this film, exposing the turbulent wartime history of Gerbaulet’s native town of Salzgritter, includes an investigation of the filmmaker’s own family. The jury’s special mention went to ABDUL & HAMZA by the young Serbian director Marko Grba Singh, chronicling the (mis)adventures of two Somali immigrants stuck on the Serbian-Romanian border.
The Camira Prize is awarded to special contributions made by political films. At the 26th edition of FID Marseille, the prize went to Argentinian director Jonathan Perel for his film essay titled TOPONYMY. Through a close and detailed observation of the urban planning and development of cities and communities built during the years of Argentina’s dictatorship, Perel tells the story of the failed liberation movement of 1974, presenting urban planning, an often seemingly overlooked part of our everyday lives, as a key tool of political repression.
Between June 6 – 19th watch for free the eleven winners of last year’s 26th edition of FIDMarseille, while preparing to meet the stars of the upcoming 27th edition!
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