Best Feature Film Mexico: Lucifer (dir. Gust van den Berghe; Mexico, Belgium)
For its poetry, built through a mundane and concrete language, its radicalism in aesthetics and form. The courage and audacity of the proposal and the direction of actors that lets the actors appear as non-actors and non-actors seem like actors.
Mention Feature Film Mexico: Plástico (dir. Ricardo Soto, Mexico)
The way in which the architecture of the story is constructed completely through very specific feelings and in which the virtuous use of camera and sound let us dive into the disturbing perception of its characters.
Best International Feature Film: H. ((dirs. Rania Attieh y Daniel García; Argentina, USA)
For its originality and its skill in conjuring up existential dread.
Film Info
SEE THE MESSAGE FROM THE FILMMAKER HERE
Mention for Acting: Robin Bartlett in “H.” (dirs. Rania Attieh y Daniel García; Argentina, Estados Unidos)
The especially touching central performance by the great Robin Bartlett.
Mention International Feature Film: Juventud de corbata / Necktie Youth (dir. Sibs Shongwe-La Mer; South Africa, Netherlands)
For its unique and fierce combination of aesthetics and language
Mention International Feature Film: Mustang: belleza salvaje / Mustang (dir. Deniz Gamze Ergüven; Turkey, France, Germany, Qatar)
For the handling, at the same time delicate and strong, of its ensemble cast.
Best International Short Fiction: Oh, Lucy! (dir. Atsuko Hirayanagi; Japan, Singapore, USA)
By means of simple and basic narrative elements, the film portrays, in a profound way, the cultural and social context in which the story unfolds, thereby allowing us, moreover, to intimately close in on the protagonist and through her on the universal nature of the story.
Film Info
SEE THE MESSAGE FROM THE FILMMAKER HERE
Best Short Film Mexico: La ausencia (dir. Arturo Baltazar, Mexico)
For the intimate portrait of divine loneliness, the film delicately observes of a paradoxical existence of an ‘abuela’ who maintains her dignity and joy.
Best Short Film Mexico: Ausencias (dir. Tatiana Huezo, Mexico)
Having a very political topic with a very humanistic and emotional approach, the film takes us to a very painful journey for a better understanding and feeling the redemption.
Best International Documentary Feature: Aquellos que sienten el fuego arder / Those Who Feel the Fire Burning (dir. Morgan Knibbe, Netherlands)
Those Who Feel the Fire Burning sheds a compassionate light on one of Europe’s most pressing subjects. This film puts a face on the immigrant experience in a Europe that keeps the tragedies of immigration in the realm of an abstract evening news story. The director’s subjective camera illustrates the disorientation and feelings of dislocation of the immigrant who is surviving in a land where they are as anonymous as the European landscape itself, all while creating an unprecedented intimacy with its subjects. We commend the filmmaker on this original approach.
SEE THE MESSAGE FROM THE FILMMAKER HERE
Mention International Documentary Feature: A German Youth / Un Jeunesse Allemande (dir. Jean Gabriel Periot; France, Switzerland, Germany)
Un Jeunesse Allemande is a remarkable found-footage film about the repressive political atmosphere of 60s and 70s Germany. The film’s importance lies in the alternative perspective that it provides on the official historical point of view on a group of people who are known to the broader public as leftist terrorists. Besides its historical importance, it is a very prescient film about the manipulative power of mass media, then and today, when re-telling history.
Best International Short Documentary: Paulina (dir. Ricardo León, Peru)
Paulina delivers an immediacy to a desperate situation in a community few of us have ever entered into. The closeness with which the filmmaker brings us to these events reveals a humanity that remains in a society that is living even in the most horrible conditions.
Film Info
SEE THE MESSAGE FROM THE FILMMAKER HERE
Mention Short Documentary International: Giovanni y el ballet acuático / Giovanni and the Water Ballet (dir. Astrid Bussink, Netherlands)
Giovanni and the Water Ballet gives us a fresh and uplifting perspective on the usual gender politics films. Fun, sweet and entertaining, this film leaves you with a smile on your face and heart that is full.
Best Documentary Mexico: Made in Bangkok (dir. Flavio Florencio; Mexico, Germany)
For the extraordinary journey of someone who is trapped in society, but refuses to suffer and fights for who she is with kindness and determination
Mention Documentary Mexico: Tiempo suspendido (dir. Natalia Bruschten, Mexico)
This incredible story of a concrete person goes universal while dealing with historical amnesia. The film successfully remembers the past in order to project hopes for the future
Best Experimental Short: Planet ∑ (dir. Momoko Seto; France, Japan)
For the sensibility in each detail of the images, as if it were visual poetry.
Best Short Animation: Edmond (dir. Nina Gantz, UK)
For its artistic and aesthetic values, the quality of the production and for the development of an original argument.
Film Info
SEE THE MESSAGE FROM THE FILMMAKER HERE
Mention Short Animation: Envuelto / Wrapped (dirs. Roman Kälin, Florian Wittman y Falko Paeper; Germany)
Had an interesting aesthetic with impressive animation and visual quality. The clash of technology with the natural environment made the thematic ideas of constant change relevant to our modern world.
Best Short Film Guanajuato: El regreso (dir. Nadia Islas, Mexico)
For the craft of its animation, art, sound design and script; in this story where ancient myths dialogue with loneliness and hopes of a brave and tenacious character to brilliantly reveal there struggle to show a personal and social path of redemption.
Women in Film and Television Award: Oh, Lucy! (dir. Atsuko Hirayanagi; Japan, Singapore, USA)
Film Info
SEE THE MESSAGE FROM THE FILMMAKER HERE
SIGNIS Award Mexico: Koshk (dir. Abdulla Al Kaabi, United Arab Emirates)
An elderly woman walks in the hope of reuniting with her son while carrying firewood on their shoulders; in a story whose simplicity evokes the depth of a delicate parable about compassion and mercy.
SIGNIS Mention Mexico: Abderrahman (dir. Elías Sfaxi, France)
A tailor, soon to retire, meets a childhood friend. With a fine thread and successful stitches, we are told a story about forgiveness and restoration.
Best Short Film Collegiate Rally: La Ribera
Audience Award Collegiate Rally: Suerte para la próxima
First Place “Identity & Belonging” Student Documentary Contest: “Music from Every Corner” (“La música desde un rincón”, dir. Luis Ángel Saldaña Ramírez, Guanajuato)
Second Place “Identity & Belonging” Student Documentary Contest: “Beneath the Embers” (“Bajo las brasas”, dir. Verónica Jessamyn López Sainz, Guanajuato)
Third Place “Identity & Belonging” Student Documentary Contest: “The Guardian” (“El Guardián”, dir. Ana Kiresty Gaspar García, Guanajuato)
Film Info
Winners of the National Screenwriting Contest for Short and Feature Film
Winner of the National Screenwriting Contest Short Film: “Head Trip Latte” by Yordi Capó
Honorable Mention for the National Screenwriting Contest Short Film: “El largo camino a la superficie” by Marcos Chavarria
Winner of the National Screenwriting Contest Feature Film: “Historias de la tierra caliente” by Luz Jaimes
Honorable Mention for the National Screenwriting Contest Feature Film: “Trigal” by Anabel Caso