WINNERS

Best Animated Winner

The Parrot Lady

The parrot lady' is inspired by a true story. The film works as an artistic interpretation of a woman's life who chose to live on the streets with her parrots, afraid of dying alone in her home.

Michalis Kalopaidis

Best Cinematographer Winner

Fish Takes Off

The golden fish is dead. Gripped by her bad conscience, a young woman drives to Venice. Upon her arrival, she realizes that she mixed up two feelings. She begins a search through an empty city on a quest to find her lost emotion.

Deniz Cooper

Best Comedy Short Winner

Wings of the Spirit

The failed Viennese musicologist Szabo works as an animal carer and house sitter for wealthy people. But when visited by his successful, younger ex-colleague Fitzthum, a rare parrot, which he should guard, escapes him. Szabo sees his already precarious life in shambles, but Fitzthum has a brilliant idea and together they go out in search of a doppelganger of the precious animal.

Albert Meisl

Best Director Winner

Shakwa

Hoda, a veiled woman, enters a police station in Beirut to submit a claim of rape. After being questioned thoroughly, she admits to the police officers that it is her husband who is abusing her. The officer at the station is surprised and somehow amused to hear this and quickly dismisses her request since it is not against the law. Nevertheless, Hoda insists and claims that he has also been physically violent, which grasps the officers' interest since the case turned into domestic violence, which is punishable by law. The officers ask her to provide them with proof of violence, get a report from a legal doctor, which costs 200 USD, so she can submit a proper claim. Since she doesn't have that kind of money, she decides to leave the station. The moment she decided to go, the officers ask her to show them her ID card for a standard background check. She provides them with what they had requested, not knowing that they will find old unpaid parking tickets in her name that have accumulated to become 200,000 LBP with the penalties. She denies having a car up until they clear the model, which turned out to be a car her husband brought supposedly for her, but then he never let her drive it and then sold it back. She begs them to let her go since she doesn't have the money, and is too scared to call her husband, but they persist in saying to her that she cannot leave before paying the penalties. Every option she has will lead to an even more problematic domestic environment.

Farah Shaer

Best Drama Feature Winner

I Am You

I Am You is inspired by the story of a refugee, the horrendous conditions before his heroic journey, the heartbreaking indifference confronting him along the way, and the uplifting power and humanity found in hope, truth and justice.

Sonia Nassery Cole

Best Drama Short Winner

Diana

Diana, a young farmer who comes from a conservative family, lives in the rural villages of the country. During her day-off, she and her two sisters sit on the rooftop, preparing themselves for the wedding of one of the neighbors. Weddings are an essential occasion for the women in the village; they use it to celebrate what's left of their femininity, which is lost mainly due to their hard work on the farms. As for Diana, it's a great chance to meet her secret boyfriend. After she meets with him on the appointed time and place, where they would have their privacy, her mother discovers her relationship with the young man, which leads to her whole family finding out as well. On the third day, at dawn, all of the family women ride the truck to go to work on the farm as usual. As Diana's father requested, her brother, who accompanies them, takes all the unmarried women with him. He wants them to see it. None of the girls on the truck are talking; no birds are singing; it is cold. It is Diana's last day.

Maysoon Khaled

Best Editor Winner

Arlecchino

Ron's life, a young man from the periphery, is being pushed into a corner, He must wear a mask for one night to help him continue to survive in the world.

Jordan Sultana

Best Experimental Winner

The Midnight’s Children Project

More than 30 years after its first publication, Salman Rushdie's epic novel, Midnight's Children resonates more than ever in a world of growing conflict, calling for articulate, creative story telling. Visual artist Alexander Klingspor and Violinist-Composer Ittai Shapira have started to integrate visual art and music in response to the book, exploring story telling through their respective disciplines. We believe that literature, visual art, and music can be effective tools for us to better understand one another in a world of growing conflict; And what better way than the magical realism of novelist Salman Rushdie, be it in a museum, classroom, or a concert hall.

Alexander Klingspor , Annica Klingspor , Ittai Shapira

Best Feature Documentary Winner

Don't Be Afraid if I Hug You

Franco has an autistic son, Andrea. When Andrea turned 18, father and son decided to cross the United States with a motorbike. From that adventure, the writer Fulvio Ervas wrote the book Don't be afraid if I hug you, that in 2019 became a movie directed by Academy Award Winner Gabriele Salvatores. During the production of the movie, we decided to take Franco and Andrea and put them again on a motorbike, to cross all Europe to Africa, to arrive in the desert of Sahara. Creating a new documentary about autism, about the relationship between a father and son, and dedicated to a man that decided to never give up.

Niccolò Maria Pagani

Best Feature Film Winner

Fish Takes Off

The golden fish is dead. Gripped by her bad conscience, a young woman drives to Venice. Upon her arrival, she realizes that she mixed up two feelings. She begins a search through an empty city on a quest to find her lost emotion.

Deniz Cooper

Best Greek Film Winner

Madonna f64.0

After an important surgery, Maria returns to her family home, in order to recover. Living with her mother, her sister and a newborn baby. While Maria’s body starts healing, a deeply hidden desire of hers surfaces. Maria wants to come close to the baby, and this creates a serious threat to the “safety” of the family home.

Stavros Markoulakis

Best Music (in a film) Winner

The Secret of Sinchanee

An industrial tow truck driver suffering from insomnia returns to his childhood home after the untimely death of his father, to discover that a paranormal presence has been living in the house and haunting the sacred land it was built on.

Steven Grayhm

Best Music Video Winner

Timonia

In one summer day, the "enlightened" lord of the village decides to wash in a bathhouse, but he cannot, since all the peasants have gone to the prohibited village dances. The lord is indignant and calls his efficient worker Timonia to resolve the issue with the bathhouse. During the bath procedures, the lord has poisoned by fumes in the bathhouse to death. But during the funeral, it turned out that the lord pretended to be dead in order to see who would grieve for him and who does not. Timonia exposes the lord's pretense and dips him in a font of ice water to revive him. After that, everyone, including the lord, goes to the village dances.

Alexey Belkin, Vsevolod Aljokhin

Best Producer Winner

Alexandre the Fool / Alexander Odyssey

Fifteen years after a psychotic event on the South China Sea flipped his life upside down, Alex, a sensitive, refined and schizophrenic man is at a crossroads. His grand-mother and confidante, who would like to die with peace of mind, insists that he tries to find a girlfriend. His encounter with a young psychotic woman gives birth to an ardently passionate relationship, making him slowly drift away from his usual emotional boundaries. While the South China Sea’s troubled waters well up in his mind, he gradually isolates himself, in danger of being swallowed by paranoia’s unfathomable abyss. An intimate odyssey, at once troubling and sublime.

Pedro Pires

Best Screenplay Winner

Helenia

A woman wakes up in the middle of the night and meets her past. When having the need of an answer, Helena will begin to walk through passages towards a new destiny.

Best Short Documentary Winner

Hunger Ward

Nominated for a 2021 Oscar®, HUNGER WARD is the third film in the Refugee Trilogy by 2x Oscar® & Emmy® nominated director Skye Fitzgerald. Filmed from inside two of the most active therapeutic feeding centers in Yemen, HUNGER WARD documents two women health care workers fighting to thwart the spread of starvation against the backdrop of a forgotten war. The film provides an unflinching portrait of Dr. Aida Alsadeeq and Nurse Mekkia Mahdi as they work to save the lives of hunger-stricken children within a population on the brink of famine. With unprecedented access within a sensitive conflict-zone, HUNGER WARD reveals a world of bravery and commitment-to-care for war-stricken children amidst desperate need.

Skye Fitzgerald

Best Short Film Winner

Bonobo

When the elevator of their public housing breaks down, the fates of Felix, a disabled pensioner, Ana, a single mother struggling with her move and Seydou, a young man passionate about dance, intertwine towards an explosive ending where their limits will be tested.

Zoel Aeschbacher

Best Student Director Winner

Silence

How does it feel like when you come to understand that you are a pedophile? This theme touches upon many, yet it remains unspoken.

Saara Hakkarainen

Best Writer Winner

The Secret of Sinchanee

An industrial tow truck driver suffering from insomnia returns to his childhood home after the untimely death of his father, to discover that a paranormal presence has been living in the house and haunting the sacred land it was built on.

Steven Grayhm