On Wednesday, 13 April the Movies that Matter Festival announced the winners of the 14th edition during the award ceremony in The Hague.
The Oscar nominated Writing With Fire by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh about the all-female staff of Dalit newspaper Khabar Lahariya was awarded the Grand Jury Documentary Award. Jury members Ryan Harrington (Film for Kinema), filmmaker Sahra Mani and producer Toni Kamau said it is “a piece of cinema that speaks truth to power, [which] brings voice to the voiceless and highlights important issues around marginalised communities – all while inspiring audiences and creating actual change.” The film also received a Special Mention in the Activist Competition.
The Activist Documentary Award went to Alex Pritz for The Territory. The Brazilian-Danish-US co-production follows a young indigenous leader fighting back against farmers who occupy a protected area of the Amazon rainforest. The jury praised both the urgency of the film as well as the cinematic experience, and called it “a wake-up call to take action and stop this environmental crisis.”
Berlinale winner Myanmar Diaries by the Myanmar Film Collective, about life in the aftermath of the February 2021 military coup, received the Camera Justitia Award, a programme section that spotlights people who stand up against corruption, inequality and discrimination in their fight for justice. The jury called it “a cinematic experience of unparalleled beauty” which “deserves the widest audience possible”.
‘My Uncle Tudor’ by Olga Lucovnicova, in which she revisits her grandparents’ house where she is confronted with her abusive uncle, won the Shorts Award. The jury stated: “Thanks to [the filmmaker’s] ability to see the details and stunning cinematography, the story is told in a subtle, yet powerful way. We believe that her voice – and many other sex abuse survivors must be heard.”
A student jury from Leiden University picked Abdallah Al-Khatib’s Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege as the winner of the Students’ Choice Award, saying it is “ a very touching portrayal of the less seen parts of the human condition”.
In Dutch Movies Matter Competition the doc Ik ben een bastaard by Ahmet Polat received a Special Mention.
The Short Award and Students’ Choice Award are endowed with €1500 prize money. All other awards come with a €5,000 cash prize.
From a fiction perspective, Hungarian drama Erasing Frank by Gábor Fabricius, which premiered at the Venice Critics’ Week last year, scooped the Grand Jury Fiction Award. The film follows punk singer Frank who is placed in a psychiatric institution in communist Hungary in 1983. The jury, which consisted of actress Monique van de Ven and directors Aboozar Amini and Kaouther Ben Hania, was “totally in awe”, calling it a “more than urgent film”.
Hany Abu-Assad received the Dutch Movies Matter Award for his Palestinian-Dutch-Egyptian Huda’s Salon, in which two women fight for their freedom. “Dutch cinema has a long tradition of films about resistance and – more recently – collaboration,” the jury stated. “The film that blew us away, adds to that tradition.” They also referred it as “a gripping feminist thriller.”
The Movies that Matter Festival 2022 still runs in the Dutch city of The Hague, online and in cities across the country until Saturday, April 16.
