“Earth in the Future” best Macedonian film at the 8.Mobile FestivalSkopje, November 19 – The eighth edition of “Mobile Festival” successfully wrapped last night in the Cinematheque of Macedonia, with the awards for the best films filmed with a mobile phone. Young audiences, including filmmakers, as well as lovers of the seventh art and creative forms with which it is created, jointly watched the foreign and domestic films that arrived at our address for the film competition filmed with a mobile.
The four-member jury selected the best films in five categories. The jury consisted of directors Marija Dzidzeva, Sasa Stanisic, Labeata Ramizi and Blerina Goce from Albania.
The festival, organized by the production KT Film and Media was held this year thanks to the support of the Macedonian Film Agency ,the City of Skopje and the Cinematheque of Macedonia. Within the eighth edition, two workshops were held in Skopje and Bitola. In cooperation with the gymnasium Nikola Karev from Skopje and SOS Children’s Village in Skopje about two dozen elementary and high school students learned about stop-animation and made short videos that were also shown on the main evening.
The film “Earth in the Future” by the young Berat Ahmetaj won the award in the national selection for young talents “Ratka Ilievska – Lale”. The jury awarded this award “for the sincere and open approach, courageously mixing different media and means, where we can recognize the youth energy and talent needed for a future filmmaker.” Ahmetaj, who is a student at SETUGS “Mihajlo Pupin” from Skopje, received a scholarship from the University for Audiovisual Arts – Parisian European Film Academy ESRA – Skopje. He and his classmates from the school, who filmed “I love Skopje” received VR-sets for mobile. Philip Lafazanovski, the author of the movie “To be a leaf”, received the same award.
The film “When was he, when he went” of the Iranian author Arash Pournamdarian won the Best Foreign Film Award shared with “The story of the motorbike” by writer JunQing DuanMu from China. In a postmodern manner, the director created a homage to the famous Iranian director, but at the same time he tells a warm human story. It does so through simple expressions and technical means, said the jury for the Iranian film. The virtue of the second rewarded film is the ruling of the film language, and the director with pure film means tells a nostalgic story that touches everyone.
The award for the most inventive film went to Benjamin Raybone from United Kingdom for his film “Peripherals”. It received recognition of the inventiveness of the use of various audio-video devices (mobile phone, binoculars, photography, sound recordings) in building one emotional world, where the border between the personal and the public vanishes.
The award for the most original story was given to Lina Valde from Germany for “Anyu or how Stalin lost his nose”, due to the original way in combining multiple media and film forms. A film that intertwines the documentary, fiction and animated. And this is in function of the film story, said the jury. The most original story is “Head Over Heels” from Leonid Grigurko from Russia. He is rewarded for his skill in using the internal editing through which the director succeeds in one shot and one minute to enter the world of a teenage girl.
David M. Lorenz from Germany won the Best Idea Award for “Selfie” for a simple and effective idea in which the director manages to portray a love story using one of the most experienced modern phenomena associated with the cell phone. The same prize was awarded to Domingo J. Gonzales for the film “28th August”.
“Earth in the Future” best Macedonian film at the 8.Mobile FestivalSkopje
