{"id":45051,"date":"2022-08-14T12:13:47","date_gmt":"2022-08-14T12:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/rule-34-tops-locarno-award-winners\/"},"modified":"2022-08-14T12:13:47","modified_gmt":"2022-08-14T12:13:47","slug":"rule-34-tops-locarno-award-winners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/rule-34-tops-locarno-award-winners\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Rule 34’ Tops Locarno Award Winners"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cRule 34,\u201d a challenging and sexually explicit film from Brazilian director Julia Murat, has emerged as the surprise winner of the Golden Leopard award at this year’s Locarno Film Festival \u2014 an edition where typically audacious and formally ambitious work dominated the program. Marking a strong ceremony for female filmmakers, the main competition jury at the Swiss festival also handed an impressive three awards \u2014 best acting director and a brace of prizes \u2014 to gritty coming-of-age drama \u201cI Have Electric Dreams,\u201d an auspicious debut feature from Costa Rican writer-director Valentina Maurel.<\/p>\n

A character study of a young female law student pursuing a parallel calling in amateur online pornography \u2014 while defending female abuse victims in her day job \u2014 \u201cRule 34’s\u201d title stems from the popular online meme that \u201cif it exists, there’s a porn version of it.\u201d Murat’s film wasn’t among the buzzier entries in this year’s competition, but its combination of complex sexual politics and frank, audience-implicating games of spectatorship evidently won over a jury that was never likely to take the safe route. Presided over by fearless European arthouse producer Michel Merkt (\u201cElle,\u201d \u201cToni Erdmann\u201d), it also included two filmmakers whose breakout features likewise tested the possibilities of sexuality and violence on screen: Alain Guiraudie (\u201cStranger by the Lake\u201d) and Prano Bailey-Bond (\u201cCensor\u201d). Emmy-winning producer William Horberg (\u201cThe Queen’s Gambit\u201d) and rising Italian filmmaker Laura Samani (\u201cSmall Bond\u201d) rounded out the panel.<\/p>\n

The jury’s other clear favorite was comparatively low-key: \u201cI Have Electric Dreams\u201d enters the anxious headspace of a 16-year-old girl caught between her parents in the wake of their divorce: Increasingly estranged from her mother, she sets out to live with her spiraling, mentally unstable father, with troubling consequences. It’s distinguished from other comparable plotted coming-of-agers by its intimate, unsentimental domestic observation and a pair of courageous performances, from young newcomer Daniela Mar\u00edn Navarro and her onscreen dad Reinaldo Amien Guti\u00e9rrez, that won best actress and actor respectively. The Locarno prizes will come as a welcome windfall for both these demanding, small-scale projects from relatively unknown filmmakers, significantly boosting their global distribution prospects.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the unusual trifecta of prizes for Maurel’s film \u2014 a close runner, one presumes, for the top prize \u2014 only one other title in the 17-film competition lineup floated the jury’s collective boat: Alessandro Comedin’s \u201cGigi La Legge,\u201d a whimsical docufiction in which a rural Italian traffic officer is caught up in an inexplicable chain of local misfortunes, took the Special Jury Prize. That meant no prizes for the highest profile film in the lineup, Russian auteur Alexander Sokurov’s surreal deepfaked historical meditation \u201cFairytale,\u201d while critical favorites like Helen Wittmann’s Claire Denis homage \u201cHuman Flowers of Flesh\u201d and Abbas Fahdel’s three-hour Lebanon Revolution doc \u201c Tales From the Purple House\u201d also left the fest empty handed.<\/p>\n

In the festival’s secondary Cineasti del Presenti competition, limited to first and second features, another female filmmaker came up trumps: Slovak director Tereza Nvotov\u00e1 took the top prize for \u201cNightsiren,\u201d a reflection on rural misogyny that braids realism with indigenous mythology. Croatian writer-director-actor Juraj Leroti\u0107 was just behind, taking the section’s emerging director award for his autobiographical debut \u201cSafe Place,\u201d about a family riven by a suicide attempt \u2014 but then came out on top in the festival’s separately juried First Feature Competition .<\/p>\n

At the festival’s closing ceremony later that day, two awards were presented in the festival’s populist Piazza Grande section. variety<\/em>‘s own Piazza Grande Award, annually determined by variety<\/em> critics in attendance at the festival, went to French filmmaker Blandine Lenoir’s \u201cAngry Annie,\u201d an abortion-rights drama that, notwithstanding its 1970s setting, plays topically in light of the recent Roe v. Wade reversal: variety<\/em>‘s review describes it as \u201cbright and predominantly hopeful in tone, and powered by a typically lovable performance from recent C\u00e9sar winner Laure Calamy as a meek wife and mother emboldened by an underground women’s movement.\u201d The audience-voted UBS Prix du Public, meanwhile, went to Swiss entry \u201cLast Dance,\u201d a feelgood life-after-bereavement crowdpleaser.<\/p>\n

Full list of winners below.<\/p>\n

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION<\/strong><\/p>\n

Golden Leopard for Best Movie:<\/strong> \u201cRule 34,\u201d Julia Murat<\/p>\n

Special Jury Prize:<\/strong> \u201cGigi La Legge,\u201d Alessandro Comedin<\/p>\n

Best Director:<\/strong> \u201cI Have Electric Dreams,\u201d Valentina Maurel<\/p>\n

Best Actress:<\/strong> \u201cI Have Electric Dreams,\u201d Daniela Mar\u00edn Navarro<\/p>\n

Best Actor:<\/strong> \u201cI Have Electric Dreams,\u201d Reinaldo Amien Guti\u00e9rrez<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

CINEASTI DEL PRESENTE COMPETITION<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best Movie:<\/strong> \u201cNightsiren,\u201d Tereza Nvotova<\/p>\n

Best Emerging Director:<\/strong> \u201cSafe Place,\u201d Juraj Lerotic<\/p>\n

Special Jury Prize:<\/strong> \u201cHow is Katia?\u201d Christina Tynkevich<\/p>\n

Best Actress:<\/strong> \u201cHow is Katia?,\u201d Anastasia Karpenko<\/p>\n

Best Actor:<\/strong> \u201cSafe Place,\u201d Goran Markovic<\/p>\n

Special Mention:<\/strong> \u201cSister, What Grows Where Land is Sick?,\u201d Franciska Eliassen<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

FIRST FEATURE COMPETITION<\/strong><\/p>\n

Swatch First Feature Award:<\/strong> \u201cSafe Place,\u201d Juraj Lerotic<\/p>\n

Special Mentions:<\/strong> \u201cLove Dog,\u201d Bianca Lucas; \u201cDe Noche Los Gatos Last Pardos,\u201d Valentin Merz<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

PIAZZA GRANDE AWARDS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Variety Piazza Grande Award: <\/strong>\u201cAngry Annie,\u201d Blandine Lenoir<\/p>\n

UBS Prix du Public: <\/strong>\u201cLast Dance,\u201d Delphine Lehericey<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

PARDI DI DOMANI SHORT FILM COMPETITION<\/strong><\/p>\n

Best Auteur Short Film:<\/strong> \u201cBig Bang,\u201d Carlos Segundo<\/p>\n

Best International Short Film:<\/strong> \u201cSovereign,\u201d Wara<\/p>\n

Runner-up:<\/strong> \u201cNeighbor Abdi,\u201d Douwe Dijkstra<\/p>\n

Best Director:<\/strong> \u201cHardly Working,\u201d Total Refusal<\/p>\n

Medien Patent Verwaltung AG Award:<\/strong> \u201cMulika,\u201d Maisha Maene<\/p>\n

Special Mention:<\/strong> \u201cMother Prays All Day Long,\u201d Hoda Taheri<\/p>\n

Locarno Short Film Candidate for European Film Awards:<\/strong> \u201cNeighbor Abdi,\u201d Douwe Dijkstra<\/p>\n

Best Swiss Short Film:<\/strong> \u201cEuridice, Euridice,\u201d Lora Mure-Ravaud<\/p>\n

Runner-up:<\/strong> \u201cDer Molchkongress,\u201d Matthias Sahli, Immanuel Isser<\/p>\n

Best Swiss Newcomer:<\/strong> \u201cHeartbeat,\u201d Mich\u00e8le Flury<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

PARDO VERDE WWF AWARDS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pardo Verde WWF Award:<\/strong> \u201cMatter Out of Place,\u201d Nikolaus Geyrhalter<\/p>\n

Special Mentions:<\/strong> \u201cSermon to the Fish,\u201d Hilal Baydarov; \u201cIt is Night in America,\u201d Ana Vaz<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

INDEPENDENT JURY AWARDS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ecumenical Jury Award:<\/strong> \u201cTales of the Purple House,\u201d Abbas Fahdel<\/p>\n

FIPRESCI Award:<\/strong> \u201cStone Turtle,\u201d Ming Jin Woo<\/p>\n

European Cinemas Label Award:<\/strong> \u201cTommy Guns,\u201d Carlos Concei\u00e7\u00e3o<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

JUNIOR JURY AWARDS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Junior Jury Award:<\/strong> \u201cPiaffe,\u201d Ann Oren<\/p>\n

Runner-up:<\/strong> \u201cTommy Guns,\u201d Carlos Concei\u00e7\u00e3o<\/p>\n

Second runner-up:<\/strong> \u201cServiam \u2013 Ich Will Dienen,\u201d Ruth Mader<\/p>\n

Environment Award:<\/strong> \u201cSermon to the Fish,\u201d Hilal Baydarov<\/p>\n

Cineasti del Presente Award:<\/strong> \u201cSister, What Grows Where Land is Sick?,\u201d Franciska Eliassen<\/p>\n

Special Mention:<\/strong> \u201cPetites,\u201d Julie Lerat-Gersant<\/p>\n

Best International Short Film:<\/strong> \u201cHardly Working,\u201d Total Refusal<\/p>\n

Best Swiss Short Film:<\/strong> \u201cFairplay,\u201d Zoel Aeschbacher<\/p>\n

Special Mention:<\/strong> \u201cLes Dieux du Supermarch\u00e9,\u201d Alberto Gonzalez Morales<\/p>\n

Open Doors Short Award:<\/strong> \u201cTechos Rotos,\u201d Yanillys P\u00e9rez<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

CRITICS’ WEEK AWARDS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grand Prix:<\/strong> \u201cThe Hamlet Syndrome,\u201d Elwira Niewiera, Piotr Roso\u0142owsk<\/p>\n

Premio Zonta Club Locarno:<\/strong> \u201cRuthless Times \u2013 Songs of Care,\u201d Susanna Helke<\/p>\n

Marco Zucchi Award:<\/strong> \u201cFledglings,\u201d Lidia Duda<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n