Film: Palestinian Filmmaker Earns Best Director Prize At IDFA; Armenian Documentary ‘1489’ Wins Best Film

Nov 17 2023

Documentaries about the impact of war claimed two of the top prizes as the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam handed out awards Thursday night.

1489, directed by Armenian filmmaker Shoghakat Vardanyan, won Best Film in International Competition. The film revolves around the disappearance of the director’s 21-year-old brother, Soghomon Vardanyan, who went missing in the early days of the renewed fighting in 2020 between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, an area Armenians refer to as Artsakh. 

The award comes with a €15,000 cash prize. The jury members of the International Competition were Emilie Bujès, Francesco Giai Via, Tabitha Jackson, Ada Solomon, and Xiaoshuai Wang. 

Jurors called 1489, “A film that acts as a piercing light that makes visible the vast hidden interior landscape of grief and creates a tangible presence from unbearable absence. Cinema as a tool of survival—to allow us all, to look at the things we would rather not see. And ultimately, an unforgettable example of cinema as an act of love.”

Palestinian filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly won Best Director in International Competition for his film Life Is Beautiful, an account of how he became stranded in Norway while making his earlier film Ambulance. While in the Scandinavian country in 2014, the border to Gaza was closed, preventing his return. But when Jabaly went to apply for a visa to stay longer in Norway, there was a snag. The form he had to fill out by computer did not list Palestine as a country. 

“For me, I was a bit shocked when I realized that I’m stateless,” Jabaly told Deadline in Amsterdam earlier this week. “Coming to Norway, applying for a new visa and then like, hey, I cannot choose Palestine [from the drop-down menu]. And that’s for me, what does that mean?”

The directing award comes with a €5,000 prize.

Jurors described Life Is Beautiful as, “A timely cinematic _expression_ of the universal need to be recognized in our full humanity. A compelling indictment of the bureaucratic and political structures that deny that. A directorial tone that, almost impossibly, manages to find hope and humor amid unimaginable pain. An urgent call for freedom, freedom of movement, freedom of opportunity and the freedom to pursue our dreams.” [Scroll for full list of IDFA Awards winners].

The IDFA Award for Best Editing (recipient of a €2,500 prize) in International Competition went to Anand Patwardhan for The World Is Family.

“A vivid evocation of 100 years of history in less than 100 minutes of cinema,” jurors wrote of The World Is Family. “An intimate act of family portraiture whose spirited subjects are lovingly painted with humor and deep humanity. A facility with scale and whose fluidity in form beautifully reflects flow of life, death, and history.”

The IDFA Award for Best Cinematography in International Competition (along with a €2,500 prize) went to Flickering Lights, directed by Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan.

Jurors called the film, “A beautiful relationship between a vibrant community and the audience, created through the curious and patient gaze of the camera. An accomplished portrait of existence without electricity, of life without light, until a moment of transformation. With an unshowy but deeply effective sense of really being there.”

In the separate Envision Competition, a section devoted to daring cinematic approaches to documentary, Best Film was awarded to Canuto’s Transformation, directed by Ariel Kuaray Ortega and Ernesto de Carvalho. 

The award comes with a €15,000 prize. Envision Competition jurors included Annouchka de Andrade, Cao Guimarães, Kirsten Johnson, and Kivu Ruhorahoza. (Basma al-Sharif, a Palestinian director and artist, withdrew from the Envision jury in the midst of the festival, citing displeasure over how IDFA had handled a pro-Palestinian protest that interrupted the opening night ceremony).

The Envision jury said of Canuto’s Transformation, “With a decades-long commitment to the filmmaking process within community, a sense of humor, and a quest to move between worlds. This film embodies the many meanings of transformation.” 

In addition, Ariel Kuaray Ortega and Ernesto de Carvalho won the Award for Outstanding Artistic Merit for their film and a €2,500 prize.

Kumjana Novakova earned the Best Directing honor (and €5,000 prize) in the Envision Competition for her documentary Silence of Reason.

Jurors praised Novakova for her “rigorous presentation of forensic evidence and the incredible courage of women whose testimony meant that rape would be internationally recognized as a crime of war. Kumjana Novakova cinematically rendered these crimes unforgettable.”

In other categories, At That Very Moment directed by Rita Pauls and Federico Luis Tachella won the IDFA Award for Best Short Documentary. The award is accompanied by a €5,000 cash prize.  

The jurors said, “For its simplicity, spontaneity, and transparency in dealing with people, things, and small details, and for the depth of the questions raised in it that are profound despite their apparent simplicity, and for its smooth and intense cinematic work, especially photography and lyrical editing, the jury awards the IDFA Award for Best Short Documentary to At That Very Moment by directors Rita Pauls and Federico Luis Tachella.”

A special mention went to My Father directed by Pegah Ahangarani.  

“For this filmmaker’s ability to transform archival photographs and video recordings into a film that combine to form an intimate visual narrative, and restores a sensitive, realistic, and influential era – with the negative and positive that it entails—in both public and private history, the jury gives a Special Mention to My Father by Pegah Ahangarani,” the jury wrote. 

Jury members for the IDFA Competition for Short Documentary were Nadim Jarjoura and Brigid O’Shea. 

The IDFA Award for Best Youth Documentary (13+) went to Mariusz Rusiński for Sister of Mine. The award is accompanied by a €2,500 cash prize.  

The IDFA Award for Best Youth Documentary (9-12) went to Sebastian Mulder for And a Happy New Year. Cash prize: €2,500.

A special mention went to Boyz by Sylvain Cruiziat.   

The jury members for the IDFA Competition for Youth Documentary were Maria Vittoria Pellecchia, Ileana Stanculescu, and Pawel Ziemilski. 

Complete List of IDFA 2023 winners: