Festival coverage sponsored by Indiepix.
Geoffrey Smith's THE ENGLISH SURGEON, which was the talk of Silver Spring this week, repeated its Grand Jury victory at Hot Docs by taking the top international prize at Silverdocs this afternoon, the prestigious American documentary festival. A special jury prize went to Chao Gan's THE RED RACE, a look at the grueling gymnastics training of children in China. The latter film was a world premiere.
Also making its debut at Silverdocs was Scott Hamilton Kennedy's THE GARDEN, which took the Grand Jury Prize in the US Competition. The film is Kennedy's follow-up to the award winning OT: OUR TOWN. The jury gave a special prize to TROUBLE THE WATER, which had previously won Grand Jury prizes at Sundance and Full Frame.
I was pleased to join my colleagues Ryan Harrington of the Tribeca Gucci Fund and filmmaker Sarah Price on the short film jury. We saw more than 30 films (more of those in a later post) and saw some amazing work. In the end, we gave three prizes - the Grand Jury Award went to Jan Zebeil's WHAT WOULD THE DROP KNOW ABOUT THAT?, a stunningly beautiful look at janitorial workers in Germany's Reichstag. We gave a Special Jury Prize for Cinematic Vision to Ditte Haarløv-Johnsen for ONE DAY and an Honorable Mention to GROUND FLOOR RIGHT, directed by Marlene Schiött Rasmussen.
Two of the year's best films - Margaret Brown's THE ORDER OF MYTHS and Anna Broinowski's FORBIDDEN LIES - took home awards today as well. THE ORDER OF MYTHS received the Cinematic Vision Award for Brown and Cinematographers Michael Simmonds and Lee Daniel. Broinowski was presented with a new award for Screenwriting. Both prizes are extremely well deserved.
Other prizes went to Sascha Paladino's THROW DOWN YOUR HEART, which won the juried Music Documentary Award and to Gini Reticker's PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL, which won the Witness Award.
Congrats to all the winners. More soon as we wrap up our week in Silver Spring...
Update: Silverdocs now has a full list of winners published at their website.
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