Romanian Ana Lungu, the director of the "Autoportretul unei fete cuminti" (Self-Portrait of a Well-Behaved Girl), on Saturday was presented the best director award of the 11th edition of the Bucharest International Film Festival (BIFF) at a gala award hosted by the Studio Cinema of Bucharest in the presence of special guest Franco Nero of Italy.
The best film award went to French film "Loin des hommes/ Far from Men," directed David Oelhoffen, "for a clever usage of specific western film features to explore sincere moral dilemmas as well as personal integrity, as it makes you think about the vanity of war and then it reminds you that we are facing today some circumstances that are similarly fragile, where violence can easily turn into a weapon against humanity."
The jury motivated its choice of the best director by saying it was awarded "for a visionary control of professional and amateur actors by clever montage, irony and long frames, annihilating the invisible borders between fiction and the unpredictability of improvised real events to bravely uncover the symbols and uncertainties of the younger generation."
"A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" (US, director Ana Lily Amirpour), one of the most anxiously anticipated films in the BIFF section, won a special citation for its "breath-taking visuals, impressive black and white cinematography and an ingenious storytelling replete with hidden symbols that stimulate the imagination of spectators."
Ana Amirpour's debut is said to have been the choice of the critics jury, which bestowed the critics' award to her, "for her remarkable filmmaking that mysteriously and discreetly humanises the legendary vampire prototype, underscoring by contrast the dehumanisation and identity crises that become specific of increasingly more people in the contemporary societies, almost everywhere in the world.'
The jury of the 11th edition of BIFF comprised Selma Mehadzic, programme director of the Zagreb Film Festival; German actress Anjorka Strechel; Laurentiu Damian, chairman of the Union of Romania's Filmmakers; Feti Dautovic, a Serbian-born producer and professor, and Edvinas Puksta, arts director of the Vilnius International Film Festival.
For the 5th consecutive year, the festival also had a critics' jury, this time made up of Catalin Olaru, Michal Klimkiewicz and Horia Barna.
The Bucharest International Film Festival was organised by the Charta Foundation, with support from Romania's National Filmmaking Centre, the Romanian Culture Institute and the Union of Romania's Filmmakers, under the high aegis of Prince Radu.