And the winners are...
The RiverRun International Film Festival honored its 2011 Jury and Audience Award winners last night at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Prior to the screening of the Festival’s closing night film, Potiche, RiverRun gave 22 awards to outstanding features and shorts.
“We are extremely proud of the shorts and features we presented to the Triad this year,” said RiverRun Executive Director Andrew Rodgers. “The positive reactions we’ve received from audiences are evidence of the high quality of our selections. With every Festival, we try to find even better films than the year before, and I think that we’ve succeeded in 2011. We’ve also made it difficult for our jurors to select just one outstanding work to honor in each category.”
Apichatpong Weerasethakul was honored with the first ever Peter Brunette Award for Best Director for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Before the presentation of the award, Richard Schneider, Brunette’s close friend and colleague, discussed Brunette’s love of film and RiverRun.
“[Peter] grew to love Winston-Salem and the film community here,” said Schneider during the ceremony. “He especially loved the fact that a relatively new and growing film festival, the RiverRun International Film Festival, had opened up right in his backyard, so to speak, a few years earlier. As many of you who knew Peter know, he regularly traveled the world to go to film festivals, so he especially admired and supported the ones he could reach just by getting in his car and driving for ten minutes.”
Along with the Peter Burnette Award, the Narrative Features jury also honored BAL (Honey) with Best Narrative Feature. Armadillo won Best Documentary Feature. Crab Trap won a special prize for Best Ensemble Cast.
2011 audiences chose to honor Home For Christmas with Best Narrative Feature and Kinshasa Symphony with Best Documentary Feature. Both awards were presented by Kilpatrick, Townsend & Stockton LLP. to.get.her took home the first ever Altered States Audience Award for Best American Indie. The awards are listed in full below.
2011 AUDIENCE AND JURY AWARDS
AUDIENCE AWARDS
KILPATRICK TOWNSEND & STOCKTON LLP AWARD FOR BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE
Home For Christmas, dir. Bent Hamer
Previous Winner: Letters to Father Jacob, dir. Klaus Haro
KILPATRICK TOWNSEND & STOCKTON LLP AWARD FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Kinshasa Symphony, dir. Claus Wischmann and Martin Baer
Previous Winner: The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, dir. Leanne Pooley
ALTERED STATES AWARD FOR BEST AMERICAN INDIE
to.get.her, dir. Erica Dunton
NARRATIVE FEATURE
BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE
BAL (Honey), dir. Semih Kaplanoglu
Previous Winner: Katalin Varga, dir. Peter Strickland
PETER BRUNETTE AWARD FOR BEST DIRECTOR
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Joe), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Previous Winner: Giorgos Lanthimos, Dogtooth
BEST ACTOR
Mathieu Amalric, On Tour
BEST ACTRESS
Djeneba Kone, A Screaming Man
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Baris Ozbicer, BAL (Honey)
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE FOR BEST ENSEMBLE CAST
Crab Trap
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Armadillo, dir. Janus Metz
Previous Winner: Last Train Home, dir. Lixin Fan
BEST DIRECTOR
Nicolas Philibert, Nenette
Previous Winner: Susan Gluth, Soap and Water
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Naomi Kawase, Genpin
NARRATIVE SHORT
BEST NARRATIVE SHORT
The Award (El Premio), dir. Leon Siminiani
HONORABLE MENTION
You Too (Na Wewe), dir. Ivan Goldschmidt
DOCUMENTARY SHORT
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Surpriseville, dir. Tim Travers Hawkins
HONORABLE MENTION
Bathing Micky (Micky Bader, dir. Frida Kempff
HONORABLE MENTION
Mr. Hypnotism, dir. Bradley Beesley
ANIMATED SHORT
BEST ANIMATED SHORT
The Eagleman Stag, dir. Mike Please
HONORABLE MENTION FOR ARTISTIC TECHNIQUE
Madagascar, A Journey Diary (Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage, dir. Bastien Dubois
STUDENT SHORT
BEST STUDENT SHORT
The Eagleman Stag, dir. Mike Please
BEST STUDENT SHORT– HONORABLE MENTION
Flip, dir. Jill Hackett
BEST STUDENT SHORT– HONORABLE MENTION
Traumdeutung, dir. Lauri Warsta
