The winners of the prestigious Doc Alliance Award 2024 have been announced tonight at the award ceremony of Docudays UA in Kyiv. The prize for the Best Feature Film, endowed with 5,000 euros, went to “The Landscape and the Fury” by Nicole Vögele. “Crushed” by Camille Vigny was chosen for the Doc Alliance Award for Best Short Film, endowed with 3,000 EUR. Both awarded films were the nominations of the festival Visions du Réel. A Special Mention by the jury went to “getty abortions” by Franzis Kabisch, nominated by DOK Leipzig.
The winning films were selected by a jury of three film professionals with different experience in the industry: Olivia Cooper-Hadjian, programmer and film critc (Cahiers du cinéma), Beatrice Fiorentino, Artistic Director of Venice Film Critics’ Week, and Marko Grba Singh, filmmaker and the Artistic Director at Beldocs.
“The Landscape and the Fury” by Nicole Vögele that won the International Feature Film Competition at Visions du Réel is a cinematographic essay exploring the issues of displacement, flight and violence. In the Bosnian-Croatian border region near Velika Kladuša, today's refugees meet locals who themselves once experienced war and flight. The film is about memories of war that are awakened, about barely healed scars that open up, about existential encounters between people who are united in suffering.
The jury praised the filmmaker “for its bravery and a keen sense of solidarity combined with mesmerizing camerawork”. Vögele sheds light on a refugee crisis exposing the hypocrisies of global politics “with a unique, warm distance between the filmmaker and the protagonists”.
With “Crushed” by Camille Vigny, who got the Doc Alliance Award for Best Short Film, the director tells from a first-person perspective her story of the domestic violence she suffered when she was 18. Using a powerful visual metaphor, Vigny created a highly courageous political statement about the devastating impact of this abusive relationship as well as a personal blood-curdling cry from the dark.
The jury honored Camile Vigny “for her audacity, her brilliant insight into the use of cinematic language, for her lucid elaboration of a personal trauma”. “Eros and Thanatos defy the natural instinct of survival: smashed car sheets become the metaphor of potentially wounded bodies, danger shows its dark fascination.”
The short film “getty abortions” by Franzis Kabisch received a Special Mention by the jury. The film nominated by DOK Leipzig received the Golden Dove Short Film (German Competition Documentary Film) at last year's festival edition. In “getty abortions”, Franzis Kabisch explores the question of how media images of abortion influence the emotional scripts in our heads.
The jury highlighted the film's “carefully crafted audio-visual narrative”, with which the director tackles the important topic of the “crucial impact of media on the way we perceive ourselves” and makes it presentable.
The Doc Alliance network of documentary film festivals supports emerging talent in European documentary film, by both helping bolster their position as artists seeking financial support for upcoming films and in helping their work reach new audiences. Each of the seven festivals (CPH:DOX, Doclisboa, DOK Leipzig, FIDMarseille, Ji.hlava IDFF, Millennium Docs Against Gravity FF and Visions du Réel) as well as the guest festival Docudays UA have nominated one short and one feature-length documentary film from its past programme. In addition, each festival in the network shows a selection from the 16 nominated films in its next edition.
A selection of nominated short films are available on the streaming platform dafilms.com from June 6 until June 16.
Full programme of Doc Alliance Award winners and nominees: DAFilms
All information about the Doc Alliance Awards 2024: Doc Alliance Awards
More information about the guest festival 2024: Docudays UA
Award winners & jury statements:
Best Feature Film
The Landscape and the Fury by Nicole Vögele
Nominated by Visions du Réel
Fascinating view into the reality of the surroundings of a small town bordering the European Union. The nights are uncertain and mysterious, the days are full of waiting, and the seasons pass. There was a war in the past, one of the bloodiest in the last decade of the twentieth century. Today, at the same place, there are people who are fleeing from some other wars and are looking for safety. In the ever-resounding cry, many families are separated.
Meticulously filmed, with a unique, warm distance between the filmmaker and the protagonists, the director sheds light on a refugee crisis exposing the hypocrisies of global politics, showing the best and the worst in human beings. For its bravery and a keen sense of solidarity combined with mesmerizing camerawork, the jury decided to give the main award to The Landscape and the Fury by Nicole Vögele.
Best Short Film
Crushed by Camille Vigny
Nominated by Visions du Réel
Images and words only apparently dissonant make up a painful and disturbing diary from which emerges a non-idealised vision of love. Eros and Thanatos defy the natural instinct of survival: smashed car sheets become the metaphor of potentially wounded bodies, danger shows its dark fascination, the duel with death resolves itself in a state of exciting tension revealing the sometimes labile border between domination and submission, between love and obsession. For her audacity, her brilliant insight into the use of cinematic language, for her lucid elaboration of a personal trauma, the Doc Alliance Award 2024 for the Best Short Film goes to Crushed by Camille Vigny.
Special Mention
getty abortions by Franzis Kabisch
Nominated by DOK Leipzig
Through extensive research and a carefully crafted audio-visual narrative, this film addresses the crucial impact of media on the way we perceive ourselves. It deconstructs the ideological assumptions behind the representations of a specifically female experience, diverting images from their initial purpose in order to find in them a new sense of openness and community. We would like to give a special mention to the short film getty abortions by Franzis Kabisch.
