AMSTERDAM HERO AWARDS | |
IAFF brings its focus on new filmmakers with the creation of a new international prize - the AMSTERDAM HERO AWARD - dedicated to daring, innovative and engaging video productions. The selected titles will compete in the following categories: Best Feature Film A jury composed by IAFF official guests (filmmakers, artists, critics and curators) will be called to judge and hand out the awards during the festival closing evening. |
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NOMINEES FOR BEST FEATURE FILM |
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   | ABSURDIAN - Winner Best International Feature Film Somewhere between Asia and Europe lies the god-forsaken desert village of Absurdistan, which a grand total of 14 families somehow manage to call home. For the village, the biggest problem is water…but for the village women, the biggest problem is their lazy men, who won’t lift a finger to remedy the situation. Tired of their lack of efforts, the village women take up the cry “No water, no sex”, leaving the good-for-nothing men scratching their empty heads. Soon a crazy war of the sexes breaks out, dividing the village in two with barbed wire and threatening to keep the women and men of Adsurdistan separated for time to come.... A delightful surrealistic comedy from the award-winning director of TUVALU and GATE TO HEAVEN, full of gorgeous dream-like moments, flamboyant humour and Monty-Pythonesque absurd situations. Nominated for the Sundance Film Festival 2008 Grand Jury Prize. |
   | LA ZONA Teenager Alejandro lives in The Zone, an enclosed, residential haven of wealth and privilege in the middle of Mexico DF, protected by private security guards, surrounded by shocking poverty. In the early hours of his birthday, three kids from the slums break into one of the Zone’s houses. In the bungled robbery that follows, an old woman is killed, but her housemaid escapes and warns security. The guards take swift, brutal action: two of the young intruders are shot dead. The third - Miguel - escapes and flees deeper into the Zone. A group of resident's meet at Alejandro's family home, and quickly decide not to report the event to the authorities, but to track the intruder down themselves and administer their own justice. The manhunt begins. Directed by Rodrigo Pla, one of the rising starts of Mexican cinema, LA ZONA is a confronting high-octane thriller that won multiple prizes at festival worldwide. Director statement: LA ZONA sets out to issue a warning about the shape of things to come, to alert the audience to a way of life that is drawing ever closer. |
| BOARDING GATE Indie cult actors Asia Argento and Micheal Madsen team up with acclaimed and unpredictable director Olivier Assayas for this eye-catching erotic thriller. Sexy ex-prostitute Sandra, has left his dangerous ex-lover and her London past behind and fled to Hong-Kong in search of fresh start. In need of papers and money, she becomes involved with an attractive young couple willing to help her. But nothing turns out as expected for Sandra and she finds herself trapped in a sordid game of violence and manipulation. Playing with the sexy noir and revenge-thriller genres more than sticking to any formal rules, Assayas built BOARDING GATE on an artful skeleton of plot twists and impressionistic moments, leaving his actors free to carry the film with their performances. With a stunning Asia Argento showing once again how comfortable she can be in playing sexually-charged, border-line vixens in a role that is tailor-made for her roughed-up and unrestrained sexuality. |
  
| NIGHT TRAIN Wu Hongyan works at the court in the province of Shaanxi in China, where she executes women condemned to death. In spite of her macabre job, she travels every weekend to a town nearby to join the parties organized by a marriage bureau. The result of her dating is widely unsuccessful and she doesn’t seem able to escape her loneliness until she meets the mysterious Li Jun. What Wu Hongyan can’t imagine is that Li Jun’s wife is the last of the women she executed... Shot in the inhospitable industrial landscape of China's western provinces, Yinan Diao’s NIGHT TRAIN is not afraid to confront difficult themes and to show the bleakest side of modern China. Having flown under the radar of Chinese censors and written and directed by Yinan Diao, author of the subversive UNIFORM, NIGHT TRAIN is a chilling drama of attraction and revenge confirming him as one of the most subversive talents in Chinese cinema today. Presented in collaboration with De Filmfreak. www.filmfreaks.nl |
   | DEFICIT AIFF is proud to present DEFICIT, the first feature film written and directed by Hollywood superstar Gael Garcia Bernal. Deficit is one day in the life Cristobal, a twenty-something year old snob high-class guy, a hip-hop fan who studies economics and is the son of a corrupt high rank Mexican politician. Through his character the film explores a certain strata of Mexican society and its relationship with other social classes. Under the surface of a party hides a story that touches upon the loss of innocence —the acceptance that a political status quo is gradually coming to an end in Mexico. From Bernal’s production notes:
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NOMINEES FOR MOST CREATIVE DOCUMENTARY |
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  | 8 BIT Produced in NYC, LA, Paris and Tokyo, 8 BIT brings a global perspective on the new artistic approaches of the DIY generation which grew up playing Atari and Commodore 64. 8 BIT argues that in the 21st century, GameBoy rock, machinima, and game theory belong together and share a common root: the digital heritage of Generation X. From an original point of view and with a loose set-up, 8 BIT exposes and examines the influence of video games on modern culture and their impact on contemporary music and visual arts. “8 BIT ably chronicles the modernist and postmodernist tendencies in the relatively recent history of video game-based art, but also suggests that the bit-bending antics of the post-video game generation hint at a new current in the uncharted waters of 21st century art history.” |
   | MEGUNICA - Winner Best Creative Documentary MEGUNICA is documentary directed by Lorenzo Fonda about a trip that was taken to document mural artist Blu at work. It was shot on location in MExico, GUatemala, NIcaragua, Costarica and Argentina, hence the acronim “MEGUNICA”. The creative development of an artist is what makes him unique and different from the others. The things he sees, the things he lives, the things he feels are what is going to build his vision of the world. Street painter and all around uber-creative visionary artist BLU has for sure developed his own way of looking at reality. That’s why, as a first attempt in documenting his work and his world, the filmmakers team jumped on a plane and crossed an ocean to reach Megunica, a land that Blu visited both in the real world and in his mind. The idea of the film was to see how his art would react to the inputs that these places would offer him. Fonda’s idea about this project was simple: to adapt his style of shooting to Blu’s style of painting. He’s very loose when doing his art. He practically always improvises, uses none or very little painting aids and takes advantage of a wall’s unique features and imperfections. So, the film tries to do the same with its look. Another key feature that makes the film quite unique are the wildly surreal and emotive animated segments that Blu himself created when he was back from the trip. Randomly inserted in the narration, they bring the viewer to his personal world, as if we were invited for a few minutes into his mind to witness what is happening at that precise moment. |
 
| BLIP FESTIVAL - REFORMAT THE PLANET BLIP FESTIVAL - REFORMAT THE PLANET is a feature length documentary which delves into the movement known as “Chiptunes”, a vibrant underground scene based around creating new, original music using old video game hardware. Familiar devices such as the Nintendo Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System are pushed in new directions with startling results. Using New York as a microcosm for a larger global movement, BLIP FESTIVAL: REFORMAT THE PLANET maps out the genesis of the first annual Blip Festival, a four day celebration of over 30 international artists exploring the untapped potential of low-bit video game consoles. With floor-stomping rhythms and fist-waving melodies, trailblazers of the chiptune idiom as Nullsleep, Martin Galway, Bitshifter, Random and more. "...if you're a fan of the music or a videogame enthusiast in general, than this movie is a must see." |
| SNEAKER STORIES In SNEAKER STORIES, Katharina Weingartner's first feature length film, we meet Adrian, Karl and Aziz, three basketball players in Vienna, Brooklyn and Ghana, and watch as they struggle to find a place for themselves within an international cycle of control and commoditisation. In this transglobal documentary, the protagonists live somewhere between fantasies of sports fame and an inglorious everyday reality. Bewitched by the marketing images and advertisements which dazzle young athletes all over the world, they follow impossible dreams, and lose sight of their more realistic choices....
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| HEAVY METAL IN BAGHDAD Produced by Spike Jonze and Shane Smith for VICE Films, HEAVY METAL IN BAGHDAD is a feature film documentary that follows the Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda from the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to the present day. Playing heavy metal in a Muslim country has always been a difficult (if not impossible) proposition but after Saddam’s regime was toppled, there was a brief moment for the band in which real freedom seemed possible. That hope was quickly dashed as their country fell into a bloody insurgency. From 2003-2006, Iraq disintegrated around them while Acrassicauda struggled to stay together and stay alive, always refusing to let their heavy metal dreams die. Their story echoes the unspoken hopes of an entire generation of young Iraqis.Presented in collaboration with VICE. |
NOMINEES FOR BEST DUTCH SHORT FILM |
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| The Truth Machine, Simone Bennett JURY: |
NOMINEES FOR BEST INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM |
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 | Impasse, Bram Schouw - SPECIAL MENTION JURY: |
NOMINEES FOR "NEXT GEN" COMMERCIAL |
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| LekkerDekker, Henri de la Haije
Jury: |
NOMINEES FOR CUTTING-EDGE DUTCH MUSIC VIDEO |
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| Worms, Sil van der Woerd, (music: Lolly Jane Blue) JURY: |
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