Göteborg Film Festival

Motivation of the jury:
The winner is a many-layered film that challenges our preconceptions about the moral and sexual forces at play within a seemingly normal well off family. It portrays the sexuality and desires of that neglected subject of cinema, a middle-aged woman, with immense sensitivity. It takes us down the rabbit hole of our hidden human needs and reveals its characters in the all their rich and dark complexity.

Members of the jury: Adina Pintilie, director, Jyoti Mistry, film professor and director, Hanne-Vibeke Holst, author, Nick James, editor, Sight & Sound and Dominga Sotomayor, director.

Queen of Hearts had its Nordic premiere at Göteborg Film Festival.

For the first time ever Göteborg Film Festival gives out an acting prize. The prize is gender neutral and all the actors in the films competing in the Nordic Competition are nominated.

Dragon Award Best Acting 2019 goes to Trine Dyrholm for the part as Anne in Queen of Hearts.

Motivation of the jury:
The winner gives a powerful performance of astonishing versatility and craft playing a character used to the moral high ground, but who is not the paragon of virtue everyone believes her to be. With great courage the actor lays bare a complex woman discovering needs she has repressed for years and can no longer resist, no matter how destructive they are.

The jury for Dragon Award Best Acting is the same as for Dragon Award Best Nordic Film.

This year’s Dragon Award Best Nordic Documentary goes to Anna Eborn for Transnistra. Presenting partner for the award and the prize sum of SEK 250,000 is Chimney.

Motivation of the jury:
Directed with love, sensibility and a strong poetic vision the winner of the Nordic Documentary Competition 2019 takes us to a world that is both exotic and familiar, close and far away. Shot on a format that is archaic yet surprisingly fresh, the crisp and sparkling visuals remind us of some classic Russian films. Fostered by a subtle sound design, it manages to capture the magical, confusing time between youth and adulthood swaying from hope to despair, modernity to the persistent remains of a bygone world. Mostly personified by Tanya, everyone in the film is both a star and a lost kid, navigating between emptiness and meaning, self-confidence and anxiety. The kids in the film are permanently trying to obtain a sense of place; sometimes brutally honest, sometimes manipulative, sometimes anxious but also with touching moments of great tenderness.

Members of the jury: Yolande Zauberman director, Mika Gustafson, director,
Martijn te Pas , head of program department, IDFA

The Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award goes to A Family Submerged av María Alché.

Motivation of the jury:
The winner is a film where the director took us floating down a stream of every day life, sorrow and loss. The real, the magic and the dreamy blend perfectly in this story of family, memories and what it means to share a past. By using small gestures the director and her actors throw a bigger emotional punch, and together they avoid the pitfalls that so many other filmmakers exploring these themes have fallen into.

Members of the jury: Che Sandoval, director, Christian Monggaard, film critic, Emma Gray Munthe, artistic director, Bergman Week

Göteborg Film Festival hosted the Audentia Award for 2019. The Award, instigated by Eurimage, is handed out to a female film maker in the festival program. Previous festivals who have hosted the award are Istanbul Film Festival (2016), Locarno Film Festival (2017) and Toronto Film Festival (2018)

Audentia – meaning “courage” and “bravery” in Latin – reflects two vital qualities for any woman wishing to pursue a career in film directing. With the Audentia Award, Eurimages intends to celebrate women who have had the courage to make that choice, by giving their work greater visibility and inspiring other women to follow in their footsteps.

The Audentia Award goes to Lucky One by Mia Engberg.

Jury’s motivation:
We were overall impressed by the richness and artistry of the films in the competition. Again and again we saw films which explored hope, freedom and the complexity of love. Our winner is a labyrinth of a film. It tells its story from multiple directions, innovating with image and sound and challenging the audience. Like a Russian doll, it is multi-layered. Its director makes us see cinema and life in new ways.

Members of the jury: Mark Cousins, director, Iram Haq, director,
Kristina Börjeson, former head of film funding, Swedish Film Institute.

The Sven Nykvist Cinematography Award, awarded to a cinematographer, goes to Ita Zbroniec-Zajt for Season.

Motivation of the jury:
The winner is a poetic fusion of documentary and fiction that marshals its suggestive powers through moments of keen and beautifully framed observation. It’s a film that’s as interested in landscape and livestock as it is in farm labourers and is subtle in revealing the connections between them and the community that uses them.

The jury that appoints the winner of the Sven Nykvist prize is the same as for Dragon Award Best Nordic Film.

The critic price, FIPRESCI, goes to Tuva Novotny and her film Blind Spot. The prize is handed out by The International Federation of Film Critics and goes to one of the films in the Nordic Competition..

Motivation of the jury:
For impeccable one shot cinematography in a the most difficult situations, while directing numerous outstanding actors in endless locations, and a script built on heart, warmth and the most reality-like nerve reckoning circumstances, the Fipresci jury awards the movie Blind Spot (Blindsone) by Tuva Novotny.

Members of the jury: Dominique Martinez, film critic, Shy Segev, film critic,
Nina Sputnitskaya, film critic.

This years Audience Dragon Award Best Nordic Film goes to Queen of Hearts by May el-Touhky.

For the second consecutive time Dragon Award Best International Film was handed out. This year’s audience price for Best Nordic Film goes to Giant Little Ones by Keith Behrman.

Presenting partner for the prize is Göteborgs-Posten.