The best feature documentary of the East Silver Market was announced at the closing ceremony of the Ji.hlava IDFF. Out of a slate of outstanding films from Central and Eastern Europe, the jury awarded the Austrian documentary Sand and Blood.
The Silver Eye Award for Best Feature Documentary was presented to director Matthias Krepp and producer Leni Gruber by members of this year’s jury made up of festival representatives: Mladen Vušurović (Beldocs, Serbia), Elena Subirà i Roca (DocsBarcelona, Spain) and Christine Dollhofer (Crossing Europe, Austria). “The film presents a story about Iraqi and Syrian war conflicts and its refugees by using self-shot images and home videos, and it finds a brave conceptual solution to the necessary anonymity of the characters that holds the viewers’ attention from the beginning to the end. It is a heart-wrenching, raw and tough film, but highly necessary to understand the complexity of humankind when put under extreme conflict and confrontation,“ commented the jury on the winner.
Like the winners in the best short and best mid-length category, Sand and Blood received not only the actual award made by the designer Tereza Durdilová but also EUR 1500 in financial support by MEDIA / Creative Europe and year-long festival support in the same amount as part of the East Silver Caravan.
Attesting to its quality, Sand and Blood is in this year’s lineup of the prestigious IDFA Competition for Student Documentary.
The nominees 2017 were:
The Beksinskis. A Sound and Picture Album (Marcin Borchardt, Poland, 2017)
Girls Don't Fly (Monika Grassl, Germany, Austria, 2016)
The Good Postman (Tonislav Hristov, Finland, Bulgaria, 2016)
Gwendolyn (Ruth Kaaserer, Austria, 2017)
Sand and Blood (Matthias Krepp, Austria, 2017)
The Third Option (Thomas Furhapter, Austria, 2017)
The Trial - The State Of Russia vs. Oleg Sentsov (Askold Kurov, Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, 2017)
Ultra (Balazs Simonyi, Hungary, Greece, 2017)
Untitled (Michael Glawogger, Monika Willi, Austria, Germany, 2017)
