25th Vancouver International Film Festival Announces Award Winners

Alan Franey, Director of the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Vancouver International Film Centre, today announced the following award winners (click here to read the full release):

The People’s Choice Award for Most Popular International Film
The People’s Choice Award for Most Popular International Film goes to DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN / THE LIVES OF OTHERS (Germany). This unexpectedly heartwarming political thriller tells a story of surveillance, deception and betrayal in 1984 East Berlin. It is the debut feature of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

Federal Express Award for Most Popular Canadian Feature Film
This year the voters for the Federal Express Award for Most Popular Canadian Feature Film selected Greg Hamilton’s MYSTIC BALL (Ontario).

The National Film Board Award for Best Documentary Feature
Jurors Mark Achbar (filmmaker, The Corporation ), Thom Andersen (California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles Plays Itself ), and Mike Maggiore (New York Film Forum) gave the National Film Board Award for Best Documentary Feature to HAVE YOU HEARD FROM JOHANNESBURG? by Connie Field (USA).

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE “For its innovative narrative strategies to engage, amuse, and enlighten about the changing face of the suburbs, we award a Special Jury Prize to Gary Burns and Jim Brown for RADIANT CITY (Canada).”

Citytv Western Canada Feature Film Award
Director Paul Fox wins the Citytv Western Canada Feature Film Award for his feature Everything's Gone Green (British Columbia). Fox's film earned praise from jurors Mark Adams (ICA Films, London, UK), Carl Spence (Palm Springs and Seattle Film Festivals), and Anne Wheeler (filmmaker, Bye Bye Blues ) , “for its skillful storytelling, eloquent visual style, and genuine sense of humour”.

The jury continued, “Coming to a conclusion was a difficult process – so we would like to give special mention to a film that had a bold and provocative directorial style – Unnatural and Accidental (British Columbia) by Carl Bessai .”

Women in Film & Video Vancouver’s Artistic Merit Award
Carmen Moore receives the Women in Film & Video Vancouver’s Artistic Merit Award for Carl Bessai’s Unnatural and Accidental. The award is given annually to a B.C. woman filmmaker or performer of distinction.

Dragons & Tigers Award Winner Announced
This year’s jury members were Robert Koehler, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Jessica Winter...read the full jury statement here

This year’s Dragons & Tigers Award goes to:
TODO TODO TEROS by John TORRES

The jury wishes to single out two films for Special Mentions.
FACELESS THINGS by KIM Kyong-Mook and GEO-LOBOTOMY by KIM Gok and KIM Sun