By Raynald C Rivera
DOHA: A film on an emotionally charged journey to help migrants from Syria to Sweden won the Al Jazeera Golden Award for Long Films category, the most prestigious award given at the closing ceremony of the 11th Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival at The Ritz-Carlton Doha last night.
The Italian film “On the Bride’s Side” by filmmakers Antonio Augugliaro, Khaled Al Nassiry Gabriele Del Grande upstaged two other frontrunners “The Auction House: A Tale of Two Brothers” from the UK and “Woman Dance Memories” from Argentina” to bag the QR50,000 prize and a golden trophy bearing the Al Jazeera logo.
The winning film traces the story of a Palestinian poet and an Italian journalist as they help five Palestinians and Syrians who fled the war in Syria complete their journey to Sweden. In a bid to avoid getting arrested as traffickers, the duo fake a wedding party by having a Palestinian friend dressed up as the bride and some Italian and Syrian friends as wedding ‘guests as they journey 3,000km across Europe.
Awarding the winners, Al Jazeera network Chairman Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani expressed hope the festival would continue the achievements it has made in the past 11 years and wished the directors success in the field of documentary filmmaking.
The winners of Al Jazeera Golden Award for Medium and Short films category were “My Name is Salt” (Switzerland) and “Apart” (Denmark/Palestine).
The Al Jazeera Jury Award winners were ‘Born in Gaza’ (Spain), “Chikara: The Sumo Wrestler’s Son” (Denmark) and “Famous in Ahmedabad” (India) in the long, medium and short films categories, respectively.
The Public Liberties and Human Rights Award was won by “Unforgiven” (Germany), “Hatred and Forgiveness” (Japan) and “Voices of Fear: The Neighbor” (Spain).
For the Child and Family Award sponsored by Al Jazeera Children’s Channel, the winners were The Last Journey of Dashdeleg (France), The Promise of Happy Childhood (Poland) and The Fencing Champion (Denmark).
Palestinian films dominated the Al Jazeera Documentary Channel Award given to the best three Arabic documentaries under the short, medium and long categories not produced by Al Jazeera Network. The winners were The Wanted 18 (Palestine/Canada) and Roshmia and To My Mother both from Palestine. Qatari film Made in Qatar won the first of New Horizon Award, which honours the best three films directed by students or beginners. The second and third places were bagged by Cebiche 7 pa amb Tomata (Peru) and Spoken Language (Jordan).
A total of QR495,000 was distributed among 18 winners in six categories this year. The festival received 920 entry forms and 775 films from 90 countries, from which 147 were chosen for screening and competition for the six awards under the long, medium, short and new horizon categories — 20 new horizon, 30 long, 50 medium and 47 short films.
The Peninsula
