Hot Docs Announces 2011 Festival Winners

TORONTO: Hot Docs has announced the winners of its 2011 documentary festival, with nine awards presented to Canadian and international filmmakers.

The Best Canadian Feature award was presented to Family Portrait in Black and White, which is directed by Julia Ivanova and produced by Boris Ivanov and Mike Jackson; the film focuses on a rundown house in Ukraine where Olga Nenva is raising 16 abandoned children. The Hot Docs’ jury stated: "The award for Best Canadian Feature goes to an intimate, poetic film that bravely confronts nuance and complexity in its characters and its world."

The Special Jury Prize for Canadian Feature was presented to two films: At Night, They Dance and The Guantanamo Trap. At Night, They Dance, follows a family of belly dancers in working-class Cairo as they try to keep the dance art alive. In The Guantanamo Trap, four lives of people affected by the U.S. detention camp are tracked. Of the film, the Hot Docs’ jury commented: "The special jury prize is shared between two films, a powerful film that mobilizes compelling characters who face uncomfortable truths, piecing together the anatomy of a broken system—The Guantanamo Trap by Thomas Selwin Wallmer, and a beautifully filmed, haunting and evocative documentary that invites us into a world we would never be able to enter otherwise—At Night, They Dance by Isabelle Lavigne and Stephane Thibault."

The film Wiebo’s War, which comes from director David York, received an honorable mention.

For Best International Feature, Hot Docs gave the award to Tristan Patterson’s Dragonslayer, which features a California skater named Skreech, who spends his days drinking, skating and going on road trips. The jury said: "For portraying a liminal space in both humor and pain; for the uncompromising camera which sees it all; for noticing the hardship of a system trapped by its own obsession of security, turning a regular terminal into an intrusive checkpoint into Europe; for not neglecting those who resist; for us who look but don’t see."

The films Grande Hotel from Lotte Stoops and Hell and Back Again from Danfung Dennis also received honorable mentions from the international features jury.

Our Newspaper from Eline Flipse received the Best Mid-Length Documentary award. The film follows a disgruntled journalist who quits a Leninist newspaper to start another in a remote Russian village. Of the film, the Hot Docs’ jury stated: "This is a portrait of a place and a people receding into history.  Alternately poignant and wary in tone, it is the compelling story of a man attempting to find meaning and purpose within a fatalistic environment."

Honorable mentions for the short and mid-lengths category went to People I Could Have Been and Maybe Am from Boris Gerrets and Something to Tell You from Pete Gleeson.

The award for Best Short Documentary went to Flying Anne from Catherine van Campen. The film features a girl with Tourette’s who is trying to find love, acceptance and understanding. The jury said of the documentary: "This is a film that impressed the jury because of its ability to bring viewers into the world of its young subject with great sensitivity and skill. Through bold camera work we’re drawn into a visceral and moment to moment experience of her emotions and struggles. It achieves a genuine sense of transcendence through its balance of vérité elements and lyrical imagery."

Michal Marczak received the HBO Documentary Films Emerging Artist Award for his film At the Edge of Russia, in which a young soldier reaches his Arctic post and is charged with the task of patrolling the nothingness. The Hot Docs’ jury commented: "Incredible storytelling of an initiation ceremony turning a young recruit into a real soldier. At the end of Russia, the end of the world perhaps, this film stunningly portrays five men as they protect their country in the icy snow against an invisible enemy. We unanimously salute this powerful debut in cinema."

The Hot Docs board of directors presented Terence Macartney-Filgate with the 2011 Hot Docs Outstanding Achievement Award.

Meanwhile, the Lindalee Tracey Award, which honors an emerging Canadian filmmaker with a passionate point of view, a strong sense of social justice and a sense of humor, was presented to documentary filmmaker Alexandre Hamel.