Alternative Film Guide

The AFI FEST 2006 jury prize for Best Film was given to Jasmila Zbanic’s Grbavica (Austria / Bosnia and Herzegovina / Croatia / Germany), the story of a Bosnian mother (an outstanding Mirjana Karanovic) who must confront her nightmarish past after her pre-teen daughter starts demanding answers about her dead war-hero father.

Grbavica, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s submission for the upcoming Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, will be released in the United States in mid-February, probably to garner some Oscar publicity. Indeed, Zbanic’s film will in all likelihood get an Oscar nod. It has already won a Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, and it is a story of undying mother love — exactly the sort of human drama that Academy voters appreciate.

Incidentally, Grbavica also happens to be a sober, touching, carefully directed, and superbly acted motion picture. It is so effective, in fact, that it has been banned in Republika Srpska, where Bosnian Serb leaders insist — despite all evidence to the contrary — that no crimes against humanity were committed during Bosnia’s civil war.

The festival’s Audience Award for Best Film went to Fredi M. Murer’s Vitus (Switzerland), about a young piano prodigy who, abetted by his grandfather (Bruno Ganz), does his best to break the ties that bind him to the music world.

Unfortunately, I missed Vitus, but as Switzerland’s entry for the Oscars, Vitus is another film with the requisite plot points that make Academy members’ hearts flutter. (Foreign-Language Film Academy voters have a perverse bias for films about suffering little boys.)

Mark Verkerk’s Buddha’s Lost Children was the jury’s choice for Best Documentary. Verkerk’s film follows a Buddhist monk as he takes to his monastery destitute children from Thailand’s Golden Triangle region. Once there, the children leave their past behind as they are indoctrinated with Buddhist philosophy.

Two films tied for the Audience Award for Best Documentary: Carla Garapedian’s Screamers (UK) and Lucy Walker’s Blindsight (UK).

Screamers follows the rock band System of a Down as they try to make the world — Turkey, in particular — acknowledge the 1915 Armenian genocide, the first of a series of mass murders that took place in the 20th century. Blindsight shows how Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to climb Mt. Everest, leads six blind Tibetan teenagers up the tallest mountain on Earth.

Stefanie Berk’s Disappearing (US) won the jury prize for Best Short, while Michael Dreher’s Fair Trade (Germany / Morocco) took the Audience Award in that category. As per the AFI synopsis, Disappearing "depicts one woman’s transformation that begins simply by learning to swim." Fair Trade uses the Strait of Gibraltar, which separates Europe from Africa, as a symbol of the rich vs. poor gap.

List of AFI FEST 2006 Award winners

 

Berlin Film Festival to Showcase Women’s Roles in Silent Films

Helen van Dongen

Jack Palance (1919 - 2006)

CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER - AFI FEST 06 Closing Night Gala

AFI FEST 06 - Friday Evening Picks

 

 

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