Golden Bull Award: Illegal
The jury of the competition, which was hosted by the Municipality of Artvin, comprised Gaëlle Vidalie, a selection committee member for the Cannes Film Festival's Directors' Fortnight; Marion Hänsel, the Belgian producer, director and actress; Norwegian journalist and film critic, Nils Vermund Gjerstad; and Turkish director, Derviş Zaim. And the jury voted Olivier Masset-Depasse's Illegal (2010) Best Film. In recognizing Illegal with the €10,000 Golden Bull Award, the jury cited as its motivation the film's "for its contemporary and universal story handled with delicate and efficient style."
Illegal, Belgium's official entry for the 2011 foreign language film Academy Award, is the second full-length feature from Olivier Masset-Depasse. Structured as a Belgian-Luxembourg-French co-production, the film confronts the audience with the grim experience of asylum seekers through the story of Tania. Fleeing Russia for Belgium, where she lives illegally, Tania endeavours to begin a new chapter in life with her 14-year-old son.
Second Prize to Chongqing Blues
The jury gave the Silver Bull Award for second best film, a prize worth €5000, to Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai's Chongqing Blues (2010) "for depicting in a moving style a quest story in modern China brillanty performed by Wang Xueqi."
Known in Turkey for his earlier titles Beijing Bicycle (2001) and Shanghai Dreams (2005), Wang tells the story of private grieving in his latest film, which was selected for the official competition at Cannes this year.
Hair Takes Jury Special Prize
The jury further announced that it was giving a Special Mention to Tayfun Pirselimoğlu's Hair "for the new narrative and challenging style of the film for Turkish Cinema focusing on passions and obsessions in a personal way". Premiering in Locarno before winning Best Cinematography and Supporting Actor awards at the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, Hair (2010) tells the story of a solitary and terminally ill man who makes wigs in a run-down district of Istanbul.
SİYAD Award to Bibliothèque Pascal
Meanwhile, SİYAD (Turkish Film Critics' Association) was represented at the Festival by a jury made up of Fatih Özgüven, Şenay Aydemir and Nil Kural. And the jury awarded its prize to the film Bibliothèque Pascal (2010) for "investing a story about disease in contemporary Europe with extraordinary humour and fantasy".
Szabolcs Hajdu's Bibliothèque Pascal, Hungary's foreign language film submission for the 2011 Academy Awards, is a fairytale with Mona Paparu, young mother of a three-year-old daughter, at its centre. The film recounts Mona's journey to western Europe on a road fraught with romance, cruelty and misadventures.
