Francophone solidarity

On September 7, the winners of the festival were announced at Cinema Imperial. The main award, Grand Prize of the Americas, went to Mad Love by Philippe Ramos (France).

The second biggest prize, Special Grand Jury Award, was won by Misafir (The Visitor) by Mehmet Eryilmaz (Turkey). Flatteringly, this award consolidates the choice of FIPRESCI, a jury of international film critics, which your author was honored to serve: the critics unanimously voted for The Visitor as the best film.

Two movies tied for the Best Director Award: Mikko Kuparinen’s 2 Nights till Morning (Finland/Lithuania) and Georgi Balabanov’s Petrov File (Bulgaria/Germany).

Malin Buska as Swedish queen Kristina in the renowned Finnish director Mika Kaurismaki’s The Girl King (Canada/Finland/Germany/Sweden) was chosen the Best Actress. The Best Actor title was won by Wolfram Berger, who appears as a bachelor, burdened with social and family problems in This Luscher’s Rider Jack (Switzerland).

Pole Michal Rogalski was awarded the Best Screenplay prize for his WWII-themed drama Summer Solstice (Poland/Germany). Chinese debutant Xing Jian was encouraged with an award for Best Artistic Contribution for his black-and-white silent Seven Days. The Innovation Award was handed over to Guillermo Ivan Duenas for Havana Moment (US/Cuba /Mexico/Colombia).

A more detailed analysis of the results of the festival will follow one of these days. However, as a jury member and critic, I would like to remark that awarding the Grand Prize to Mad Love, which is by far not the best film among those presented in Montreal, suggests a manifestation of cultural solidarity of francophone Quebecois with their former mother country.

The Day’s FACT FILE

The International Film Festival (Fr. Le Festival des films du monde, FFM) is one of Canada’s oldest and the only one North American competition festival recognized by the FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Associations). FFM is held each year in late August in Montreal, the capital of the Francophone province of Quebec. Unlike its one year older brother festival in Toronto (which due to the absence of the jury and, consequently, competition, is in effect a huge movie market, oriented at the movie industry of the US and Canada), the Montreal forum has its own system of incentives and is more focused on films from all over the world.