Malvinas doc wins BAFICI top prize for Argentine films

Argentine documentary The Victors came out as the big winner at the 27th Buenos Aires International Film Festival (BAFICI, in Spanish) awards ceremony on Saturday.  The film took home the Buenos Aires City Grand Prize (awarded to the best Argentine film in competition), while director Pablo Aparo won Best Director in the international competition.  The Victors is a surprising first-person documentary shot on location in the Malvinas, featuring scenes of everyday life in the islands as well as interviews with locals.  Moving between a research-style documentary and a portrait of Aparo’s unexpected friendship with a rough-minded local farmer, the film offers a fresh perspective of the consequences of the war as well as the inhabitants’ views and feelings about Argentina’s sovereignty claim.  The result is both a thorough and unprecedented observation of present-day Malvinas as well as an honest search for common ground among the irreconcilable differences between the two enemies turned friends.  Festival director Javier Porta Fouz led the ceremony at the Alfredo Alcón Hall of the San Martín Theater in downtown Buenos Aires. The film festival, which kicked off on April 15, is set to close on Sunday. Other awards In the International Competition, the Grand Prize went to Hair, Paper, Water…, by Nicolás Graux and Minh Quy Trương. Manon Coubia’s Forest High won best film, while José Alayón’s Dance of the Living won the Special Jury Prize.  In the Official Argentine Competition, the Grand Prize went to Do or Die, directed by Toia Bonino and Marcos Joubert. A portrait of life in jail featuring footage shot by prison inmate Joubert himself with a hidden cellphone and sent to Bonino on the outside.  Julián Tagle’s Machado, a documentary featuring the director’s own family of film and TV actors in the 1990s, took both the best film award and the Audience Award. The best director award went to actress/director Tamara Leschner for her comedy I love you, Antoño.  In the Avant-garde and Genre competition, the Grand Prize went to Nicolás Pereda’s Everything Else is Noise, while Antonin Peretjatko’s Vade Retro won best film.  News in development, check back for updates  Editorial disclaimer: Although the UK refers to the territory as the “Falkland Islands,” Argentina strongly contests this name. The Buenos Aires Herald uses “Malvinas” to refer to the islands.