‘Those That, at a Distance, Resemble another’, ‘Tendre’ and ‘Vulture’, winners of Documenta Madrid 2020

Share in:
Palmarés

Documenta Madrid, the International Film Festival promoted by Madrid City Council through the Area of Culture, Tourism and Sports, has made public tonight in the Azcona screening room of Cineteca Madrid the winner films of its 17th edition. The list of winners has been read by the guest artistic commissioners Cecilia Barrionuevo and James Lattimer, together with Gonzalo de Pedro, artistic director of Cineteca Madrid, and the jury of the competing categories.

The Jury Award for the Best National Film, awarded with 10.000 euros, has been granted to ‘Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another’ (‘A imagen y Semejanza’) by Jessica Sarah Rinland, “a rigorous formal film proposal, that intertwines austerity and radicalness, hatching a lucid discourse about images genesis and reproduction as a way of creating through complex ideas. It uses filmic textures and the ductility of the negative as a narrative element, reaching the miraculously purpose of narrating through form. Intentionally and thoroughly, the director leaves out of the frame more than she shows, defending the value of the part above everything. A handcrafted film, of philosophical scope”, explained the national competition jury, comprised of the Colombian filmmaker Camilo Restrepo, the Content Director of MUBI Chiara Marañón and the Zinebi Festival director Vanesa Fernández.

The same Jury has given the Spanish film ‘Gorria’ by Maddi Barber the Special Jury Award, awarded with 5.000 €, for being “a film that gives a new dimension to the actions of the humans in their interactions with nature. A pure, conscious look, guided by a genuine curiosity for the filmed reality and the film language, proposing through its images ways of thinking the time and its cycles. Its temperate framings and austerity in the use of sound, go beyond the register of life in the country: immersive and atmospheric, the film approaches the processes of life and death that define the social agreement between the humans and nature”.

A media voz’, directed by the Cubans Patricia Pérez Fernández and Heidi Hassan, has been awarded with a Special Mention of the national competition jury for asking the audiences “when was the last time that we did what we really wanted to do? This is the question that closes the film. This question, more than a conclusion, is a defiance to the future, a starting point of any personal or filming project. We highlight the exercise of a humanist cinema in ‘A media voz’, that affects life, using images as a tool to make up our future, individually and collectively. Cinema as a mirror, cinema as exchange, cinema as need, as survival”, argued the jury.

‘Tendre’, Jury Award for the Best International Film
The international Competition Jury, comprised of Eva Sangiorgi, artistic director of the Viennale (Austria), the French-Armenian photographer and filmmaker Valérie Massadian, and the awarded Spanish filmmaker and artist Lois Patiño, gave the French feature film ‘Tendre’, directed by Isabel Pagliali, the Jury Award for the Best International Film, awarded with 10.000 €, for its “pure filmmaking that doesn’t try to seduce, a cinema of the primordial sensuality of the years that hide the shyness of its feelings. Rough words not to disclose the fragile, brutal gestures to mean the opposite. Animal and poetic, violent and tender at the same time, ‘Tendre’ whispers a new language where, within the frame, the bodies feel free from hierarchies and social judgements”.

The same jury has also given the Special Jury Award, awarded with 5.000 €, to the German feature film ‘Die Letzte Stadt’ (‘The Last City’) by Heinz Emigholz, because with this film “we celebrate the radicality of a cinema that questions its language a t the same time that makes the most of its expansive possibilities. Formal and irreverent, humanist and structural, it is a film in mutation, where reflections continue after the spaces, the characters and sequences, to infinite combinations”.

In other hand, ‘This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection’, by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese and the Austrian ‘How to Disappear’ by Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel and Michael Stumpf have been awarded with Special Mentions. According to the jury, the “spiritual roots and the millenary traditions come to life in the screen with ‘This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection’. Balance between sensations, the power of the form, both ancestral and modern, the dignity of people and a nation rarely represented in cinema. It’s not for the dead, it’s for the living!” The jury also highlights ‘How to Disappear’ for being “an unexpected film, intelligent and deeply political. A film that plays with the expression possibilities of hyper realistic videogames to the absurd, defying the rules of a system to show its flaws and giving the deserters their real ethical and revolutionary power”.

‘Vulture’, Jury Award of the International Competition Fugas
The jury of the International Competition Fugas, comprised of Haden Guest, director of Harvard Film Archive, Dora García, artist and filmmaker, and Raúl Camargo, director of the International Film Festival of Valdivia (Chile), gave the Jury Award for the Best Film of Fugas, awarded with 10.000 €, to ‘Vulture’ by Philip Hoffman, “for its beauty, the perfection of the relationship between sound and image, its radical concept of cinematographic time, the sophistication of editing, but, most of all, for its unnegotiable commitment with the filming essence – image in time – and the didactic and community context that generates around its work”.

The same jury gave the Special Jury Award, awarded with 5.000 €, to ‘Responsabilidad empresarial’ by Jonathan Perel, “for its rigorous and lucid revelation of evil in its purest and most terrible banality incarnated by the countless corporations, Argentinian and transnational, that cooperated intentionally with the dictatorship, committing terrible crimes against humanity for profits”.

The International Competition Fugas has also awarded with Special Mentions ‘Lluvia de Jaulas’ by Cesár González for “the power of its proposal, that finds that place between beauty and urgence, between symphony and noise, like the shining before an explosion, confirming a completely original poetry against the flow that invites the audience to a journey far away from any condescendence, a journey that will leave its mark,” and ‘Signal 8’ by Simón Liu “for its dazzling cinematographic celebration of Hong Kong as an urban space and still vital community, even though in danger, that invents its own rhythm and ways of resistance”.

‘143, rue du Désert’, ‘A media voz’ and ‘Il n'y aura plus de nuit’, favourites of the audience
The festival spectators have chosen the best films of each competition through their votes, both in theatres and through Filmin. The winner of the Cineteca Madrid Audience Award in the International Competition, awarded with 1.000 €, has been the Algerian ‘143, rue du Désert’ by Hassen Ferhani; the winner of the Cineteca Madrid Audience Award in the National Competition, awarded with 1.000 € has been ‘A media voz’ by Patricia Pérez Fernández and Heidi Hassan; and the winner of the Cineteca Madrid Audience Award in the International Competition Fugas, awarded with 1.000 €, has been the French ‘Il n'y aura plus de nuit’ by Eléonore Weber.

In this 17th edition, for the first time, the films selected in all the sections have competed in equal conditions and awards, no matter the length of the works. “We thought it was important that the festival promotes its support creative freedom, not generating differences or categories regarding the length of the films”, the artistic commissioners declared. The festival has awarded prizes for a total of 45.000 €.

About Documenta Madrid
The tension between autobiography and auto-fiction, new or impossible worlds, political essays, fictions around people or real experiences, or filmed theory are some of the themes in the 98 films of the 17th edition of Documenta Madrid, the International Film Festival promoted by Madrid City Council with Cineteca Madrid as the main venue.

A multidisciplinary edition that shows a humanistic and complex vision of the world and goes beyond the film genre frontiers, expanding its program beyond documentary cinema, and also beyond physical frontiers, being celebrated also for the first time in the VOD platform Filmin.

Most of the in-theatre projections of the festival have been screened between December 9th and 13th in Cineteca Madrid and Museo Reina Sofía, but Documenta Madrid will continue to be presential in Filmoteca Española until December 23rd with Robert Frank’s retrospective, and in the Nave 0 of Matadero Madrid, where an exhibition devoted to Eric Baudelaire can be visited until February 7th, 2021. The Filmin program, that includes the films selected for the International Competition, the International Competition Fugas and two special screenings, ‘El tango del viudo y su espejo deformante’ and ‘Her Socialist Smile’, will be available until December 20th.

The 17th edition of Documenta Madrid has been possible thanks to sponsoring and cooperating entities like Acción Cultural Española AC/E and the Spanish Culture Internationalization Program (PICE), ICAA, Institut Français Madrid, Swiss Embassy for Spain and Andorra, Goethe Institut, Austrian Cultural Forum, Instituto Confucio and ALOFT Gran Vía.