Terry George's Hotel Rwanda, starring Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo, won the top Audience Award at the 2004 AFI FEST, held at the ArcLight theater complex at Sunset and Vine, in the heart of Hollywood. Mexican filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke's Temporada de patos / Duck Season received the Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature Film in competition.
The Jury Prize in the International Shorts Competition went to Taika Waititi's Two Cars, One Night from New Zealand, with a special mention to Chris Landreth's Canadian short Ryan. Another Canadian entry, Avi Lewis' The Take, won the Best Documentary Award. Robin Scovill's US-made The Other Side of AIDS received a special mention.
Other Audience Award winners (festivalgoers were allowed to vote on all films shown at the ten-day festival) were Neele Leana Vollmar's Meine Eltern / My Parents as Best Short Film and Wash Westmoreland's Gay Republicans as Best Documentary.
The 2004 AFI FEST sponsored by Audi showcased more than 136 films from 42 countries. Compared to last year, festival organizers have estimated a 20% increase in box-office receipts, while the number of attending filmmakers has doubled.
At a packed screening of his Les Choristes / The Chorus, Academy Award-winning producer Arthur Cohn told the crowd that the American Film Institute should be renamed the "International Film Institute." He wasn't kidding. In fact, at least when it comes to the AFI FEST, the title "International" would be more than appropriate as most of the festival's highlights were non-U.S. fare such as the British-South African-Italian Hotel Rwanda, the Chinese House of Flying Daggers, the Franco-Swiss Les Choristes, the Spanish-French-Italian Mar adentro / The Sea Inside, the Spanish La Mala educación / Bad Education (director Pedro Almodóvar was honored with a special tribute), the Chilean Machuca, the Franco-American Un long dimanche de fiançailles / A Very Long Engagement, the South African Yesterday, and the German Gegen die Wand / Head-On.
In addition to Almodóvar, among the film celebrities from around the world who took part in this year's festival were Shohreh Aghdashloo, Alejandro Amenábar, Kevin Bacon, Javier Bardem, Gael García Bernal, Orlando Bloom, Don Cheadle, Kevin Costner, Penélope Cruz, Joseph Fiennes, Jodie Foster, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, David Lynch, Olivier Martinez, Audrey Tautou, Lesley Ann Warren, and Ziyi Zhang.