We announced the winners and set fire to the banana!
Friday, June 26, 2015: Grand Prix of the 20th Youth Film Festival and 8th Four River Film Festival won the Danish film 'Aftermatch' directed by Adam Paaske from the film group Station Next.
The grand, i.e. expert jury is comprised of Alexandre Juruena, Rada Šešić and Cheryll Hidalgo. Alexandre Juruena got his Master's at School of Contemporary Art -UFF (Federal Fluminense University) and he is a professor of animation and director of the festival Anim!Arte (International Student Animation Festival of Brazil). Šešić works as a screenwriter, director and film critic. She is a professor of the Dutch Film Academy in Amsterdam. Cheryll Hidalgo is the creator of the program for film/video production at the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences (SAAS), in Seattle, Washington, USA.
The jury of experts awarded the film 'Anna' by Marko Bičanić and Nika Vahčić from Zagreb's Blank_film incubator in the national competition of the 20th Youth Film Festival in the freestyle category. In the feature film category, the award went to the film 'Bara's constant' by Matija Piralić from the Cinema Club Karlovac. 'A House Full of Sava' by young director Mario Mateljić from MMC SKIG in Gunja, won the award for best documentary, while in the category of animated films, the best-rated movie was D D DRAGON by Lucija Majnarić from FKVK Zaprešić.
In the international competition of the 8th Four River Film Festival, the jury awarded the prize in the category of free-style film to the film Dorian Gray made by a group of authors from Ljubljana, in the category of feature films to the film 'The Best Attempt' by Hadley Hillel, and in the category of documentary the winner was the Portuguese film 'What day is it today?, while the Belgian film 'Grand Finale' took the victory in the category of animated film. Matija Piralić took another award – the 'Yellow Flag' for his film 'In the Name of Burek'. With this unique recognition young filmmakers in competition programme with their works contribute to non-violence on film.
The 'little jury' also had its say, i.e. 28 young film lovers from Italy, Macedonia, Denmark, Croatia, Serbia and Hungary. They decided on the best actress, actor, director, director of photography, screenwriter and editor. The best actor and best actress come from Denmark and have received awards for the films 'After the match' and 'Boy'. Best director and best screenwriter in the opinion of the jury was the young Hadley Hillel, and the prize went for the film "Best Attempt". According to the little jury, the director of the film tells us a funny story. His naive protagonist and his fantastic and weird universe make him the best. The idea of the film is original, the story is well summarized and simple which makes the theme and message of the film stronger. Hadley also took the Audience Award and with four awards in total became the absolute winner of the 8th Four River Film Festival.
After the award ceremony we set fire to the banana!
As banana was selected for this year's visual identity of the Karlovac festival, master of sculpture Nikola Faller and his assistant Bojan Kiski, professor of fine arts from Karlovac, gave a workshop on creating straw sculptures on the first day of the festival, and at the announcement of winners on June 26th, in a fiery performance they burned the five meters tall banana placed on Korana River.
This year, of the 398 films submitted from around the world, the selection committee has chosen 72 films competing for the 17 awards and two 'special' awards. Youth Film Festival and Four River Film Festival are the central place for Croatian high school filmmaking, and they were held from June 23 to 27 in Karlovac.
Youth Film Festival is the central place of Croatian high school filmmaking. The quality of the main program is accentuated by more than a rich accompanying program at different locations - workshops, roundtables, tours and performances by musical bands. The goal that Karlovac truly lives film, in every sense of the word.
27.06.2015.