The jury of the 22nd New Horizons International Film Festival in Wrocław awarded the Grand Prix and the 15,000 EUR prize to See You Friday, Robinson, directed by Mitra Farahani from Iran.

We prefer to let Jean-Luc Godard, one of the protagonists of this film, write the motivation for this award, so here it is a Godard quote that also sums up the qualities of See You Friday, Robinson:

“Films were invented to look, tell, and study things. They were mainly a scientific tool for seeing life in a different way. To be only spectacular should be 5 or 10 percent of cinema. All the rest should be documentary study in a broad sense, meaning research and essays.  (...) Movies were invented to show reality, but they have not been used that way. They have been used to show dancing girls, killers, machine guns, lovers... (...) In fact, my process has always involved going to the side, being marginal, in the margin. A notebook doesn’t exist without margins. The margin is a necessary place.”

– this is how the five-member jury justifies its verdict. This year’s jury comprised of Agata Buzek – a marvelous Polish actress, for years associated with the New Horizons festival; Michel Franco – one of the most important representatives of Mexican cinema, laureate of many awards, including three in Cannes and the Silver Lion in Venice; Radu Jude – the chief exorcist of Romania’s national demons and a master of grotesque cinema, winner of the Silver Bear and the Golden Bear; Nadav Lapid – one of the most important contemporary Israeli directors, laureate of the Jury Prize in Cannes and the Golden Bear; Sandra Wollner – representative of young Austrian cinema, whose unique debut – The Impossible Picture – received accolades at international festivals, and her second film – awarded at the Berlinale – The Trouble With Being Born, was one of the most discussed titles at the 20th New Horizons Festival.

Mitra Farahani is an artist, filmmaker and producer born in 1975 in Tehran. A graduate of graphics at Azad University, she also studied at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. She currently lives and works in Italy and France. Since 2001, all Farahani films have had their world premieres at the Berlin International Film Festival. 

The jury also awarded the film Afterwater, directed by Dan Komljen. As the jury explains: existing in the fluid spans of time, this film explores a world of constant becoming, a human, prehuman and maybe post-human unconscious. In one word: water. Often a film is described as dream-like, but in its deliberate submersion into poems, the sounds of nature and images well beyond our notions of beauty and decay, this film actually achieves it. 

The attendees of the 22nd New Horizons selected their favorite. The Audience Award went to Péter Kerekes, author of 107 Mothers. What is worth noting is that the ratings of all the films in the competition were very high.

This year’s scholarship for the author of the film presented in the Shortlist section went to Kinga Pudełek, director of Big Phat Party – for refreshing nonchalance, creativity and emotional honesty, which allows us to feel the euphoria of the night and the hardships of the morning together with the characters. The scholarship is funded by the New Horizons Association.

For the fifth time, the festival awarded the Zuzanna Jagoda Kolska Award for the youngest artist of the New Horizons. This year, the honor went to Piotr Michalski, co-author of the film Sperm Obsession.

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See You Friday, Robinson and 107 Mothers will be shown on the last day of the on-site festival – on Sunday, July 31st. The screening of the Grand Prix winner will start at 15:45, and the winner of the Audience Award will be shown at 18:45. See You Friday, Robinson; 107 Mothers, Afterwater, Big Phat Party and Sperm Obsession can also be viewed as part of the online edition of the New Horizons IFF (at nowehoryzonty.pl).

The festival is not over – we invite you to online screenings of over 100 titles until August 7th!