The seven awards in the Israeli Feature Film Competition included the Best Israeli Feature prize, which was won by Yousef Abo Madegem’s 'Eid'.
The Jerusalem Film Festival has announced the winners in its various competitions, with a total of approximately $273,699 awarded this year. A total of 21 awards were given across the competitive feature sections.
The Haggiag Award for Israeli Feature Films, the festival’s top honour for Israeli features, went to Yousef Abo Madegem’s Eid, the first full-length film made by a Bedouin director. While films by Arab directors have won top prizes at the festival before, this marks the first time a film by a Bedouin director has received this recognition.
Boris Lojkine’s drama The Story Of Souleymane won Best International Film. The feature, which previously received the Cannes Un Certain Regard Jury Prize, tells the story of a young man rehearsing for an asylum application interview while cycling around Paris delivering food.
Romanian director Emanuel Parvu won Best Director for Three Kilometers to the End of the World, which depicts a young gay man’s brutal attack upon returning to his conservative village in the Danube Delta wetlands for the summer.
The International Feature Competition jury, composed of Michel Franco, Guy Nattiv, and Maria Choustova, also gave a Special Mention to Hu Guan’s Black Dog.
UK-Indian director Sandhya Suri’s rape drama Santosh won Best Film in the First Feature Competition, with a Special Mention going to Block Pass by French director Antoine Chevrollier.
Tom Nesher’s debut feature Come Closer, about a woman whose grief over her brother’s death turns into obsession, won multiple awards. It received two Israeli Feature Competition prizes – Best Israeli First Feature and Best Actress for Lia Elalouf – and one Israeli Cinema Award for Best Original Score by Ginevra Nervi.
Other winners included Jonathan Millet’s Ghost Trail, which won Best Feature Film in the In the Spirit of Freedom Competition, and Danel El-Peleg’s The Governor, which took Best Documentary in the Israeli Documentary Competition.
