Amber Fares’ “Coexistence, My Ass!,” which centers on Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi, won the Golden Alexander in the International Competition section of the 27th Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival Sunday.
The International Competition jury, which is composed of director and photographer Dimitris Athiridis, filmmaker Lauren Greenfield and producer Signe Byrge Sørensen, said: “With a compellingly constructed narrative and a fearless challenge to every taboo in the [Middle East] region, Noam’s disarming voice and humor invite the audience to a deeper understanding as we laugh and cry with her, and reconsider our biases with open minds and hearts.”
The film, which was described by Variety’s reviewer as “urgent, eye-opening and enormously compassionate,” won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Thessaloniki win makes the film eligible for the documentary category of the next Academy Awards.
The Silver Alexander in the International Competition went to “Free Leonard Peltier,” directed by Jesse Short Bull and David France. The film, which focuses on Native American activist Leonard Peltier, “speaks to the history of human rights abuses against the Native Americans, and their multi-generational resistance, while highlighting the ongoing struggle over their sovereign nation land rights and resources,” the jury said.
A Special Mention went to Weronika Mliczewska’s “Child of Dust,” which follows a Vietnamese man searching for his father, a former U.S. soldier. The jury said the film “is a beautifully shot cinèma vèritè portrait that tells a universal story about the generational consequences of war and the longing for paternal love.”
The Golden Alexander for the Newcomers Competition went to “How to Build a Library,” directed by Maia Lekow and Christopher King, which follows two Kenyan women’s mission to restore a public library in Nairobi. The film had its world premiere at Sundance.
The jury, composed of filmmakers Inka Achté and Tünde Skovrán, and journalist Tina Mandilara, said: “With passion, the filmmakers expose the lasting imprints of colonialism while celebrating activism and the fight of two female friends for truly accessible public spaces; places where people can engage with their own narratives and histories.”
The Newcomers Competition Silver Alexander went to Byron Kritzas’ “They Talk About Worship Here,” about Kore. Ydro., a band from Corfu. The jury said it was “moved by the warm heart and rebellious spirit of this film, which reminds the audience about the healing and connecting qualities that art, in this case music, can have for people across generations and borders.”
A Special Mention was given to “Pet Farm,” directed by Finn Walther and Martin A. Walther. The jury said the film, about a Norwegian man who wants to create a farm, where he would raise foxes for domestication and later sell them as pets, was “about loneliness, the need to find a lost self through the connection with the most primitive version of nature.” The jury added it “raises moral dilemmas and makes us see with its beautiful cinematography the problems of the civilized and supposedly progressive world we live in.”
The Golden Alexander for the Film Forward section, for films that “experiment with the form and method of documentary filmmaking,” went to “Endless Cookie,” directed by Seth Scriver and Peter Scriver. The Canadian animated film explores “the complex bond between two half brothers — one Indigenous, one white — traveling from the present in isolated Shamattawa to bustling 1980s Toronto.”
The jury, composed of art curator Nadja Argyropoulou, producer Grant Keir and film consultant Anne Marie Kürstein, said it was a “sharp and funny meditation on ‘a film within a film,’ on family community and shared culture. It’s a celebration of the soundtrack of the everyday life that takes us inside a world that is rarely accessed without condescension.”
The Film Forward Competition Silver Alexander went to Catherine Gund’s “Meanwhile.” The jury said the film successfully deployed “a form of poetics without losing precision, social and historical markers and a sense of collective art-making that takes us inside the profound resilience of black culture.”
A Special Mention went to Fermín Eloy Acosta’s “Museum of the Night,” for its “intensive research into a largely unknown archive and the attempt to create a visual language that corresponds to the subject matter.”