INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
OFFICIAL COMPETITION

DOCÚPOLIS AWARD - Best Documentary film
Worth : 6.000 €

Arcana, Cristóbal Vicente, 96’, Chile
This film presents a record of the last working year of  the old prison of Valparaiso (Chile), which closed in 1999. It a homage to the prison and to the values and customs of the men who have lived within it during its 150 year history. The viewer is granted access, from an outsider’s perspective, to different aspects of life within the prison. The challenge is to discover what lies beyond the limits imposed by the inmates themselves; boundaries that in a seemingly impenetrable way separate the outside from the inside. It is the respect towards this world that is the principal lesson learned throughout the film’s journey, whilst simultaneously being the only means of access to reality within the prison walls.

Special Mention: El Color de los Olivos, Carolina Rivas, 97’, Mexico
During the construction of the Wall between Israel and the West Bank the Palestinian Amer family resisted to abandon their home. And so, the Wall was built around their house, trapping the family inside. Their house has been classified by the Israeli army as Military Zone. Olive trees, two small donkeys, and friendships at school are their discoveries- by choice or by chance. The story of the Amer family constitutes a point of departure whereby we can reflect on our time, racial segregation, borders, and the absurdity of war.

GRAN ANGULAR AWARD TVE Catalunya
Best Short Documentary Film
Worth: 3.000 €

Si no hay viento no suben, Mauricio González, 22’, Colombia
Si no hay viento no suben is an anthropological contemplation on the context of violence in which children and adolescents live in the Aguablanca district in the city of Cali, Colombia, one of the most dangerous places of the country. From a couple of sequences that represent the every day life in the neighbourhood, a complicated symbolic world that moves these gangs unfolds.
Life and death, creation and deconstruction, they coexist in the surroundings of every human being, just as the kites of Aguablanca that float between de beauty of the sky and the threat of the electricity cables.

BEST FIRST DOCUMENTARY AWARD
Worth: Documentary’s distribution by Ermedia

La isla durmiente,David Martín de los Santos, 59’, Spain
Illusion, hope and belief are weapons that we create to survive when we are in despair. Religion, superstition and the arts are spaces in which we can develop these concepts, created by our own imagination to fight distress. Cubans are dreamers and this film is trying to travel towards a real Cuba, a Cuba as real as its dreams. 

Special Mention: Felices Fiestas,Juan Barney, 45’, Argentina
A documentary work that has as the starting point an investigation of the phenomenon of insanity. We are confronted with a series of testimonies full of coherence, reality, humanity and clarity. 

HONORIFIC AWARDS

TERCER OJO AWARD – Best experimental documentary film

Paraíso,Felipe Guerrero, 55’, Colombia
Paradise is a poetic expression of a country and its historical memory. The pretext of documenting a Colombian movement called Nadaísmo (Nothingism), that originated during the rebellion in the seventies, has converted itself in an intimate portrait of contemporary Colombia. The persons that wander about in this film are helpless witnesses of a past that overwhelmed them with violence, and in present day times they stand out as inhabitants of a vulnerable paradise. Through the aesthetics of a Super 8 camera pulses the reality of a country entangled in its own war.

HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD – Best documentary film

Punam, Lucian Muntean, 27’, Serbia
The child's voice of nine year old Punam Tamang transports us to the Nepal city of Bhaktapur. There we are presented with a stark description of the hard life of this young girl and the dismal social conditions in which she lives. The film captures the hard work the children are required to perform and also takes a peek into the poor five grade school that represents Punam's symbol of hope. We look at the situation through the eyes of this young Asian girl, who dreams of becoming a teacher and helping other children.

BEST LATIN AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY


El comité, Mateo Herrera, 93’, Ecuador (ex-aequo)
A day to day description of the complexity of an institution that has converted itself in a symbol of ¨modernity¨, el PENAL GARCIA MORENA, the principal penitentiary in the city of Quito, Ecuador. Prisoners and visitors are mixed during a strike, which occurs on the visiting day, with the result that three hundred persons are taken hostage.

Unser America, Kristina Honrad, 84’, Switzerland (ex-aequo)
Unser America is a search for traces travelling through the present of past times – 25 years after a revolution that everybody thought was impossible. It is the subjective point of view of a European woman approaching a small Latin American country that – at that moment in time – liberated itself from a dictatorship that lasted 45 years.
The film encloses the Nicaraguan Revolution linking the past and the present, the reality, the myths and the poetry. A film showing the women that took up the arms back then, and today are struggling day in day out to survive. What is still left from the great dreams of independence and justice?
 

AUDIENCE AWARD

Désobéir, Patricio Henriquez, 80’, Canada
They dared to challenge discipline and military hierarchy. Consciously, they disobeyed orders. They regarded it their duty and decided to become soldiers. They believed in the honour and moral values of the military education. In the midst of a conflict, they received orders to torture, to kill civilians, to violate human rights and to conceal the evidence of these crimes in name of the superior interests of the home land. They listened to their conscience, and paid a high price for their beliefs. 

THE MAN OF THE CAMERA AWARD: Joris Ivens