BY RAYNALD C RIVERA
DOHA: A tour de force historical documentary on French citizens living in Palestine from 1928 to 1952 took home the Aljazeera Golden Award for Long Films category, the most prestigious award given at the closing ceremony of the 10th Aljazeera International Documentary Festival last night at Ritz-Carlton Doha.
“It’s an honour to have the greatest award for this festival and I’m very happy to receive this. I hope this film will be seen by a lot of people because it’s a very interesting documentary on historical Palestine,” winning filmmaker Maryse Gargour told this daily minutes after receiving the award from Shiekh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani, Chairman of Aljazeera Network.
The award included a QR50,000 prize and a golden trophy bearing the Aljazeera logo.
Entitled Encounter with a Lost Land, the French film takes the viewer to the period through an artful montage of personal and consular correspondences, audiovisual archives, newspapers, and interviews with the children of Western diplomats who lived in Jaffa, Palestine. “This is the first time the film has won an award but it has been nominated in other festivals as Best Director and Best Feature Documentary in Europe,” said Gargour.
The Aljazeera Golden Award for Medium and Short films categories were bagged by The Knit Doll and We are Here...Mogadishu.
The Aljazeera Jury Award winners were As Time Goes By in Shanghai, Never Die As A Refugee and Unravel in the long, medium and short films categories, respectively. For the Public Liberties and Human Rights Award the winners were Gulabi Gang; Escape to Death; and Antoine, A Journey From Hell for the Long, Medium and Short films categories respectively.
Al Jazeera Children’s Channel-sponsored Child and Family Award was given to Storyteller, Just Play and Broken Strings.
Broken Strings, a Palestinian film on children of Gaza which opened the festival, received rousing applause from the audience.
The Al Jazeera Documentary Channel Award given to the best three Arabic documentaries in the Short, Medium and Long categories not produced by Aljazeera Network was won by The Brain that Sings, Hodgking’s, and Cry Childhood.
The New Horizon Award which honours the three best films directed by students or beginners was won by Daughters of the Niger Delta, Sodiq and Finistere.
Two new awards were introduced this year — Best Director Award won by Long Distance Runners, Olga-To My Friends and Sati and Best Camerawork Award by From the Depths, Lovebirds-Rebel Lovers in India and Left Side of the Face.
A total of QR600,00 prize money was distributed among 24 winners in eight categories.
During the awarding ceremony, Festival Director Abbas Arnaout told the audience to have a moment of silence “for every innocent person killed around the world.” Afterwards, he honoured the 15 jury members from 15 countries. A total of 161 films from 60 countries vied for honours. Participating films included 34 long, 51 medium, 45 short and 31 new horizon films. They were chosen from among 910 submitted from 110 countries.
The Peninsula
