Open City Docs Fest announces award winners

After another successful festival, Open City Docs Fest announced the  winners of its five awards. Find out  which filmmakers were lucky enough to claim the prize.

The second edition of Open City Docs Fest wrapped up this weekend after presenting the audience with four days of documentary heaven. Despite the rainy weather the festival saw a doubling in the number of attendees and managed to place itself firmly on the map as one of London’s biggest documentary-only festivals.

Nearly 5000 attendees, including filmmakers, media and delegates from around the world visited the event sponsored by UCL. Open City saw over a 100 documentaries being screened and hosted some interesting events such as a comedy night entitled ‘What’s Up Doc’, a masterclass documentary filmmaking with Nicolas Philibert, and the hugely popular London Contemporary Voices rescore of Il Capo. 

The festival opened last Thursday with the Sheffield Jury Award winning film Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, directed by Matthew Akkers. The film proved to be so popular among the audience that a second screening was added to the programme at the last minute. For those who missed it,  Dogwoof will release the film in UK cinemas on 6 July. Closing the festival was Jacqui Morris’ McCullin, which had its international premiere at the festival.   

Awards

After this final screening it was time for much-acclaimed director Nicolas Philibert, who chaired the Open City jury, to award the following prizes:

Grand Jury Prize

The Open City Grand Jury Prize was presented by Philibert himself who awarded it to 5 Broken Cameras, directed by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi (Israel/Palestine/France 2011). If you missed this film at previous festivals the good news is that on the back of this award and previously winning the Audience prize at Sheffield Doc/Fest, New Wave Films have picked up the film for UK distribution.

Time Out Prize

This award was presented by Time Out’s Film Editor, Dave Calhoun, who awarded the prize to, Insitu, directed by Antoine Vivani (France, 2011).

UK Emerging Prize

The UK Emerging Prize went to One More Kiss by Chris Christodoulou (UK 2012), with a Special Mention to The Betrayal by Karen Winther (UK/Norway 2012). The award was presented by director Olly Lambert.

International Emerging Prize

The International Emerging Prize was awarded to High Tech, Low Life directed by  Stephen Maing (USA 2012) with  a Special Mention to  A Life Without Words by Adam Isenberg (Turkey, Nicaragua 2011).

Best Short Film Prize

The Marble Village by Ioana Dorobantu (UK 2011) was awarded with the Best Short Film Prize. The award was presented to Dorobantu by Austin Raywood.

My Street

In addition, Open City Docs Fest announced and screened the winning films from the festival’s national digital filmmaking competition, My Street, where prizes of £500 cash, Steady Wing camera equipment and a one-on-one film consultation with filmmaker, Marc Isaacs, were presented to the following films all of whom were directed by  female filmmakers:

First Prize: – On The Bench directed by Maha Taki (London)
Second Prize: – Still Life directed by Emma Barnie (London)
Third Prize: – 55 Seconds directed by Jan Cawood (Saltburn).

MyStreet, was launched in 2011 and is an integral part of Open City Docs Fest. It is devoted to exploring the world we live in through the vision of documentary film. To view this years winners and trailer visit the My Street website.