The feature film Zo Reken by Emmanuel Licha on Saturday evening won the Grand Prix of the national competition of the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM), including the 24e edition ends Sunday.
The film also won the Student Jury Prize and a Special Mention for the Magnus-Isacsson Prize which was awarded to Dear Jackie by Henri Prado.
Premiered at the Toronto Hot Docs last April, Zo Reken documents and questions the benefits of humanitarian aid in Haiti. In a vehicle crisscrossing the country, the director brings up and interviews some representatives of the Haitian community. The exchanges are lively, sincere, sharp.
These images are coupled with those, cold, immaculate and striking, taken inside a distribution center of Médecins sans frontières.
The jury of the national feature film competition summed up their choice as follows: “For its poetic breaths and its fertile film device which, with the complicity of the team, highlight the tension between the characters and the reality that surrounds them. This process reminds us that our existence will always be political. ”
Awarded to an emerging filmmaker whose work demonstrates social awareness, the Magnus-Isacsson Prize went to Dear Jackie which defines itself as a cinematic letter to Jackie Robinson, former member of the Montreal Royals in 1946 and the first black player to join a major league team, the New York Yankees. Addressed to Jackie Robinson (1919-1972), the film tells him the reality of the black community of Little Burgundy today.
We should also mention that Maxime Lacoste-Lebuis and Maude Plante-Husaruk won the New Looks for Beyond the valleys, work devoted to the cultural and social practices of a small community in the Himalayas.
Looking for Horses, big winner
PHOTO PROVIDED BY RIDM
A scene from Looking for Horses
Several other prizes were awarded including the Grand Prix of the international competition given to Looking for Horses scored by Stefan Pavolovic. The film focuses on the friendship that is forged between the director and a lone fisherman who lost his hearing during the Bosnian War.
The jury of the international competition awarded him its Grand Prix “for his great mastery of a hybrid form, for the eloquence of his formal experimentation within the narrative process, for the poetry of his questions which are both intimate and universal”.