Official Competition: Best Film Award
First Feature Competition: Sutherland Award
Documentary Competition: Grierson Award
Immersive Art and XR Competition: Best Immersive Art and XR
Short Film Competition: Best Short Film
Audience Award – Best Feature Film
Audience Award – Best Short Film
OFFICIAL COMPETITION – BEST FILM AWARD
The Best Film Award recognises inspiring, inventive and distinctive filmmaking. Presented in association with Sight and Sound, Official Competition includes the following shortlisted titles:
- ARGENTINA, 1985 – Ricardo Darín stars in Santiago Mitre’s uncompromising political drama, thrillingly recreating one of Argentina’s most legendary trials, which sought to bring the country’s military dictatorship to justice.
- BROTHER – Clement Virgo’s film is a bold and breathtaking story of brotherly love, set over three separate time periods, in Toronto’s West Indian community.
- CORSAGE – Empress Elizabeth of Austria gets an irreverent makeover in Austrian director Marie Kreutzer’s exhilarating period drama starring Vicky Krieps.
- LES DAMNÉS NE PLEURENT PAS – Fyzal Boulifa follows his arresting debut Lynn + Lucy with another striking film about the perils of falling foul of community and social expectations.
- ENYS MEN – Bait director Mark Jenkin follows up his acclaimed debut with this chilling, endlessly mysterious folk horror tale, beautifully shot on grainy 16mm.
- GODLAND – With his third feature, Hlynur Pálmason (A White, White Day) delivers a breathtakingly inventive and ambitious historical epic, set in mid-19th -century Iceland.
- NEZOUH – Soudade Kaadan (The Day I Lost My Shadow) turns to her Syrian roots for this wry, poignant look at a family forced from their home in Damascus.
- SAINT OMER – Alice Diop reinvents the courtroom drama in this concentrated, gripping study of a writer and the young African woman whose fate comes to fascinate her.
FIRST FEATURE COMPETITION – SUTHERLAND AWARD
Titles nominated for the Sutherland Award in the First Feature Competition, recognising an original and imaginative directorial debut, are:
- 1976 – An unnervingly brilliant portrait of the ways in which the Pinochet dictatorship realised its brute force and pervasive influence, from debut director Manuela Martelli.
- BLUE JEAN – In Georgia Oakley’s quiet and soulful drama, a closeted PE teacher reckons with her identity during the introduction of stigmatising law to Thatcherite Britain.
- JEONG-SUN – This bold and heartfelt debut by Jeong Ji-hye tackles the epidemic of digital sex crimes in South Korea, making visible those marginalised by sexism, ageism and classism.
- JOYLAND – A conservative family in Pakistan is torn apart when a son falls in love with a transgender erotic dancer, in Saim Sadiq’s riveting queer drama.
- MEDUSA DELUXE – A hairdressing competition descends into paranoia and chaos after a participant is murdered, in this faux single-take comedy-thriller directed by Thomas Hardiman.
- OUR LADY OF THE CHINESE SHOP – In Ery Claver’s allegorical film, a plastic statue of the Virgin Mary unexpectedly changes the lives of those who encounter it on the streets of Luanda.
- ROBE OF GEMS – A loosely linked set of characters intersect in a rural community beset by cartel crime in Natalia López Gallardo’s disarming debut feature.
- RODEO – French debut director Lola Quivoron revs up with a ferocious tale of a woman kickstarting a new life in the world of guerrilla motocross racing
DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION – GRIERSON AWARD
The Grierson Award recognises feature-length documentaries with integrity, originality and social or cultural significance. The nominated films are:
- ALL THAT BREATHES – Two brothers struggle to run their homegrown hospital for birds in Delhi as extreme pollution and social unrest loom, in Shaunak Sen’s captivating documentary.
- ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED – Oscar-winner Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) presents a stirring portrait of artist and activist Nan Goldin, focusing on her fight against the Big Pharma.
- CASA SUSANNA – Sébastien Lifshitz pieces together the story of a pioneering transgender network in this inspiring and essential slice of queer history.
- THE FUTURE TENSE – Following LFF Official Competition entry Rose Plays Julie in 2019, Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy return to LFF with this timely meditation on being Irish in England.
- KANAVAL: A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF HAITI IN SIX CHAPTERS – Haitian history is presented through an explosion of colour, dance and music, as the country prepares for its legendary carnival from directors Leah Gordon and Eddie Hutton Mills.
- LYNCH/OZ – In his latest love letter to the movies, acclaimed documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe argues that the key to unlocking filmmaker David Lynch lies in The Wizard of Oz.
- NAME ME LAWAND – Edward Lovelace explores the power of communication and community with this rapturous portrait of a young Deaf Kurdish boy.
- WHAT ABOUT CHINA? – Winner of CPH:DOX’s New: Vision Award, Trinh Minh-ha’s latest work is a multi-layered essay that is both intellectual yet lyrical, political yet poetic.
BEST IMMERSIVE ART AND XR AWARD
The Best Immersive Art and XR Award recognises the most innovative work from creators who are boldly exploring the intersection of art, film and expanded reality. The nominated projects are:
- ALL UNSAVED PROGRESS WILL BE LOST (France, Lead Artist – Mélanie Courtinat)
- APPARATUS LUDENS (UK-Sweden, Lead Artist – Untold Garden)
- AS MINE EXACTLY (UK, Lead Artist – Charlie Shackleton)
- BLACK MOVEMENT LIBRARY – MOVEMENT PORTRAITS (USA, Lead Artist – LaJuné McMillian)
- THE CHOICE (Canada-Poland, Lead Artist – Joanne Popinska)
- DIGITAL MOTIONS (Germany, Lead Artists – Helge Letonja, Marcel Karnapke, Björn Lengers, Anke Euler, Music Florian Tippe)
- FRAMERATE: PULSE OF EARTH (UK, Lead Artists – Matthew Shaw, William Trossell, ScanLAB Projects)
- THE INFINITE LIBRARY (India-Germany-Czech Republic, Lead Artist – Mika Johnson)
- IN PURSUIT OF REPETITIVE BEATS (UK, Lead Artist – Darren Emerson)
- INTRAVENE (UK-Canada, Lead Artists – Darkfield, Crackdown, Brenda Longfellow)
- THE LAST TIME I SAW SNOW (UK, Lead Artists – Isobel Mascarenhas-Whitman, Alex Tennyson)
- LINE OF CONTACT (Netherlands-UK-Ukraine, Lead Artist – Dani Ploeger)
- MISSING PICTURES EPISODE 3: THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG (France-UK-TaiwanLuxembourg-South Korea, Lead Artist – Clément Deneux, with – Catherine Hardwicke)
- MONOLITHS (UK, Lead Artists – Lucy Hammond, Hannah Davies, Asma Elbadawi, Carmen Marcus)
- ON THE MORNING YOU WAKE (TO THE END OF THE WORLD) (UK-France-USA, Lead Artists – Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, Mike Brett, Steve Jamison, Arnaud Colinart, Pierre Zandrowicz)
- PAN + TILT (UK, Lead Artists – Ruth Gibson, Bruno Martelli)
- PLANET CITY (USA-China, Lead Artists – L Liam Young, Kayvan Boudai, Elliot Ordower, James Clark)
- WALZER (The Netherlands, Lead Artists – Frieda Gustavs, Leo Erken)
BEST SHORT FILM AWARD
The Best Short Film Award recognises short form works with a unique cinematic voice and a confident handling of chosen theme and content. Representing a broad range of disciplines, the films nominated for this award are drawn from the main short film selection and from short works screening in Experimenta. The ten films competing for the award are:
- AN AVOCADO PIT (d. Ary Zara)
- CHECOSLOVAQUIA (d. Dennis Perinango)
- DROP OUT (d. Ade Femzo)
- I HAVE NO LEGS, AND I MUST RUN (d. Yue Li)
- IT’S RAINING FROGS OUTSIDE (d. Maria Estela Paiso)
- THE RITUAL TO BEAUTY (d. Maria Marrone)
- ROSEMARY A.D. (AFTER DAD) (d. Ethan Barrett)
- A SOD STATE (d. Eoghan Ryan)
- TRANSPARENT (d. Siobhan Davies)
More at Festival website.