Swiss director Marie-Elsa Sgualdo’s “Silent Rebel,” a interval drama that follows a rape survivor’s defiant journey of self-discovery, received the highest prize on the eighth Joburg Film Festival on Saturday.
Sgualdo’s function debut tells the story of 15-year-old Emma, who’s impregnated after being raped. Defying her oppressive rural Protestant group, she embarks on a journey of self-determination, reworking her trauma right into a catalyst for emancipation whereas confronting the ethical hypocrisy of her village and the lingering shadows of World Conflict II.
Commenting on its being awarded the Nguni Horn for greatest function, JFF founder and government director Tim Mangwedi praised the movie’s “good pairing of an attractive narrative with putting cinematography.”
The movie, which premiered within the Venezia Highlight part on the 82nd Venice Movie Pageant, additionally scooped the prize for greatest cinematography, for the work of DoP Benoît Dervaux, whereas lead actress Lila Gueneau acquired a particular point out from the jury for her efficiency.
South African directing duo Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar’s “Variations on a Theme,” which received the highest prize in Rotterdam’s Tiger Competitors, took house the award for greatest African function. The administrators’ sophomore movie, which follows an aged goat herder who falls sufferer to a rip-off promising long-overdue reparations for her father’s WWII service, was praised by Selection’s Man Lodge following its Rotterdam triumph for its “warmly observational, literary high quality” that’s “lovingly attentive to language and native customized.”
The award for greatest documentary went to Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi for her Rotterdam-premiering “Let Them Be Seen,” which gives a prismatic portrait of the director’s hometown of Tapoleng, a small village in South Africa’s Jap Cape. Greatest modifying went to Czech director Ondřej Provazník’s #MeToo drama “Damaged Voices,” edited by Anna Johnson Ryndová.
The award for greatest brief movie went to Tevin Kimathi and Millan Tarus’s “Stero,” whereas greatest scholar movie went to George Temba’s “The Silent Inheritance” and Khaya Dube’s “Umxoxiso” received the Younger Voices Competitors. Veteran South African producer Harriet Gavson additionally earned a particular recognition at Saturday night time’s awards gala.
The competition jury was comprised of producer Cait Pansegrouw (“This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection,” “The Wound”); producer Bongiwe Selane (“Happiness Is a 4-Letter Phrase”); producer and director Sia Stewart (“Why Not Us: Southern Dance”); filmmaker and Septimius Awards founder Jan-Willem Breure; Berlinale curator and World Cinema Fund jury member Dorothee Wenner; and programmer Keith Shiri, founding father of Africa on the Photos.
The eighth Joburg Movie Pageant wraps March 8 with the world premiere of “The Trek,” a western-horror from first-time director Meekaaeel Adam.
This 12 months marked the JFF’s greatest version but, with competition curator Nhlanhla Ndaba saying organizers acquired a file 770 submissions from almost 100 nations earlier than whittling down the ultimate choice to 60 movies.
On the competition’s opening ceremony, Ndaba acknowledged the tough context inside which this 12 months’s version was going down, whereas additionally reminding the filmmakers in attendance that their voices stay as important as ever.
“This competition occurs in the meanwhile when the world feels something however nuanced — in the meanwhile when artists are being requested: Must you converse or must you keep silent?” Ndaba mentioned. “On the Berlinale we witnessed a fierce debate about whether or not filmmakers ought to interact in politics. It was steered that artists ought to avoid politics as a result of movies are a counterweight to politics.
“The Joburg Movie Pageant has at all times been an area the place politics and artistry meet, the place the African continent and the world join, the place politics are simply however one other story. The place we don’t faux that storytelling occurs in a vacuum,” he continued. “The second we cease reflecting the world in all its magnificence and in all its brokenness, it’s the second we cease being related.”
The Joburg Movie Pageant runs March 3 – 8 in Johannesburg.
