9 October, 2017 | By Orlando Parfitt
The winning films at the 2017 Zurich Film Festival have been announced.
Kirsten Tan’s Pop Aye won the prestigious Golden Eye for best film in the international feature film competition.
The film is Singapore’s entry for the Oscars and has already won the world cinema dramatic special jury award for screenwriting at this year’s Sundance, as well as the VPRO big screen award at International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Set in Thailand, it stars Thaneth Warakulnukroh as a down and out architect who is reunited with his childhood elephant and embarks on a road trip across the Thai countryside.
Custody by Xavier Legrand and Under The Tree by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson earned a special mention in the category.
Rahul Jain’s Machines won the international documentary prize, with Thomas Haemmerli’s I Am Gentrification. Confessions Of A Scoundrel and Pau Ortiz’s The Other Side Of The Wall earning special mentions.
Both international feature and documentary awards come with a CHF 25,000 ($25,541) cash prize.
Lisa Brühlmann’s Swiss coming-of-age film Blue My Mind won the best film in the focus: Switzerland, Germany, Austria Competition category. The award comes with a CHF 20,000 ($20,433) prize. The film also won the critics’ choice award for best debut feature in competition.
Mark Grieco’s provocative amazon rainforest doc A River Below won the audience award.
Winner: Pop Aye by Kirsten Tan (Singapore)
Special Mentions: Custody by Xavier Legrand (France) and Under The Tree by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson (Iceland, Denmark, Poland, Germany)
Winner: Machines by Rahul Jain (India, Germany, Finland)
Special Mentions: I Am Gentrification. Confessions Of A Scoundrel by Thomas Haemmerli (Switzerland) and The Other Side Of The Wall by Pau Ortiz (Spain, Mexico)
Blue My Mind by Lisa Brühlmann (Switzerland)
Winner: Before Summer Ends by Maryam Goormaghtigh (Switzerland)
Special Mention: Animals by Greg Zglinski (Switzerland, Austria, Poland)
Blue My Mind by Lisa Brühlmann (Switzerland)
A River Below by Mark Grieco (Colombia, USA)
Up In The Sky by Peter Lennstrand (Sweden)
Rabbit School – Guardians Of The Golden Egg by Ute von Münchow-Pohl (Germany)
Seraina Nyikos for Secondo (Switzerland)