‘Empty Nets’ Catches Top Prize at Adelaide Film Festival
Iranian drama film “Empty Nets” was Monday named winner of the AFF Feature Fiction Award at the Adelaide Film Festival. Directed by Behrooz Karamizade, it collected an A$10,000 ($6,320) cash prize.
The festival’s competition section is one of the oldest in Australia and seeks to reward bold filmmaking. This year’s competition mostly comprised films by directors making their feature debuts. They included “Blaga’s Lessons,” from Bulgarian director Stephan Komandarev; “Embryo Larva Butterfly,” by Greek-Cypriot writer-director Kyros Papavassiliou; “On The Go,” from directors Julia de Castro and Maria Gisele Royo; “Sahela,” directed by Australia’s Raghuvir Joshi; and “You’ll Never Find Me,” from Adelaide-based duo Josiah Allen and Indianna Bell.
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“’Empty Nets’ is a searing portrait of the bleak socioeconomic reality for young people without family money in contemporary Iran, distinguished by atmospheric visuals, an evocative sense of place, stirring lead performances and a powerful grasp of the sea as a metaphor for both freedom and menace,” said the jury which comprised Kitty Green (“The Royal Hotel”), Goran Stolevski (“Housekeeping for Beginners,” “Of an Age”), film journalist David Rooney, Indonesian film curator Alexander Matius and film executive Sally Riley.
The same jury awarded an equal cash prize to “Hollywoodgate,” as winner of the AFF Feature Documentary Award. It was directed by Egyptian journalist turned filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at.
“ ‘Hollywoodgate’ is a masterful critique of two diametrically opposed systems — the U.S. military and the Taliban — conducted while working in close contact with the latter at great personal risk. An insightful fly-on-the-wall study of a transitional moment for Afghanistan following the withdrawal of American troops, which functions as both a detached Taliban infomercial and a slyly subversive takedown that crucially leaves itself open to multiple interpretations, all of them eye-opening,” the jury said.
The other films in the documentary section were: “Apolonia, Apolonia,” by Danish director Lea Glob; “Lakota Nation vs United States,” from directors Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli; “Mutiny in Heaven: The Birthday Party,” by director Ian White; “Seven Winters in Tehran,” from director Steffi Niederzoll; and “The Mountains,” by Norwegian director Christian Einshøj.
The South Australia state government is backing a third edition of low-budget feature film development initiative, Film Lab: New Voices. Co-funded by the South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC), Adelaide Film Festival and Screen Australia, Film Lab: New Voices offers three filmmaking teams the chance to develop their first low-budget feature through a 12-month development program. At the completion of the Lab, one team will be selected to receive A$600,000 ($379,000) in screen production grant funding with their film to premiere the Adelaide Film Festival in 2026.
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