In a week when the Winter Olympics opened in Sochi and Russia’s attitudes to homosexuality garnered considerable coverage, Clermont-Ferrand named an Eastern European coming out short its Grand Prix winner.
Pavel Veskanov’s 30-minute drama took the festival’s main award. In a 60+ field of conetenders, none of the trio of Antipodean titles, James Fleming & Kelly Hucker’s Ghost Train, Miranda Nation’s Perception and Kiwi Adam Gunser’s Killing Phillip, were named winners.
Pride teaser
Clermont-Ferrand’s only multiple prize winner in this year international awards was Brazilian Fáuston da Silva’s Meu amigo Nietzsche, which took both the Comedy and Audience awards.
In the French competition (won by Hu Wei’s China-France Tibet-shot co-production La Lampe au beurre de yak) Sébastien Betbeder’s Inupiluk took the Audience Prize and Best Producer Award for Frederic Dubreuil.
In the experimental LAB competition, which only presents three gongs, Patrick Cederberg & Walter Woodman’s Canadian animation Noah took the Grand Prix and Audience Prize.
Show Me Short’s Gina Dellabarca was en France for the duration, along with the NZFC’s Short Film #2 Hayden Ellis and Marketing #1, Jasmin McSweeney. Dallabarca has generously shared her impressions of this year’s edition of Clermont-Ferrand here.
The winners in the international competition were:
Grand Prix
Pride, Pavel Vesnakov, Bulgaria, Germany
Special Jury Prize
Juke-Box, Ilan Klipper, France
Audience Prize
Meu amigo Nietzsche, Fáuston da Silva, Brazil
Best Animation Film Award
Junk Head 1, Takahide Hori, Japan
Mediatheques Award
Ud, spring over, ind, Thomas Daneskov, Denmark
Canal + Award
Sequence, Carles Torrens, United States, Spain
Best Comedy “Fernand Raynaud” Award
Meu amigo Nietzsche, Fáuston da Silva, Brazil
Jury Mention
Les Jours d’avant, Karim Moussaoui, Algeria, France
Namo, Salah Salehi, Iran
Olga, Kaur Kokk, Estonia
Zima, Cristina Picchi, Russia
