EUROMEDITERRANEAN / Review of the awards at year’s end

Apart from PriMed, which ended on December 12th in Marseille, several Mediterranean festivals gave their awards over the past few days. Recap from Annaba, Brussels and Marrakesh.

On its return after a long break, the Annaba Festival of Mediterranean Film gave its Golden Annab to a Palestinian black comedy, “Dégradé”, directed by Arab and Tarzan Nasser. The film’s female cast, led by Hiam Abbass, also received a collective Best Actor Award. Merzak Allouache took the Jury Prize for “Madame Courage”. Algerian spectators awarded the Audience Award to “Lettres de cerises”, an epistolary love story made by the Syrian Sulaf Fawakherdji.

In Brussels, the Jury Grand Prix and the Young Jury Award at the 15th Mediterranean Film Festival went to “Sivas”, a Turkish film by Kaan Müjdeci. Set on the plains of Anatolia, it’s about a young boy and an accidentally wounded fighting dog. Leyla Bouzid’s Tunisian film “A peine j’ouvre les yeux” won three awards: Jury Special Mention, the Critics Award and the Audience Award.

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Finally, the Marrakech Festival as usual hosted a galaxy of film stars for its 15th year. The jury, chaired by American director Francis Ford Coppola, voted for a Lebanese film directed by Mir-Jean Bou Chaaya: “Very Big Shot”, a comedy about drug trafficking and amateur films.