The awards ceremony took place in the Polish capital on Saturday night, state news agency PAP reported.
The Grand Prix of the 2023 Warsaw Film Festival went to The Shadow of Catire for a “touching and delicate, universal and personal cinematographic journey into the depths of human soul," the jury of the international competition said.
The Shadow of Catire tells the story of a man “haunted by his violent past," according to the Warsaw Film Festival.
“In a land run by a military crime syndicate, his last resort is to sell his old family estate to a colonel named Corona who's committed to buying the estate for just a fraction of its price,” the organisers said.
Collecting the honour, Aldana said he was “very grateful for this award” and thanked everyone, from the jury to the audience and the film’s producers, for "making it happen," the PAP news agency reported.
The Warsaw Grand Prix includes a cash prize of PLN 100,000 (EUR 22,050), funded by the mayor of Warsaw.
Special Jury Award
The judges, Dorota Kędzierzawska of Poland, Nadejda Koseva of Bulgaria, Yurii Andrukhovych of Ukraine, and Alejandro Torres Kennedy of Mexico, also gave the Best Director Award to France’s David Oelhoffen for The Last Men, starring Poland’s Andrzej Chyra, the PAP news agency reported.
Meanwhile, the Special Jury Award went to Zdeněk Jiráský’s Czech-Romanian-Slovakian co-production I Don’t Love You Anymore, "for the emotional and poetic image of the inner world of two teenagers in the contemporary Eastern European reality," the judges said.
Crème de la Crème
The Crème de la Crème Award went to Felipe Gálvez’s international co-production The Settlers, with a Special Mention to Poland’s Oscar-nominated EO by Jerzy Skolimowski.
Best Documentary Feature
Meanwhile, Photophobia, a Czech-Slovak-Ukrainian film by Pavol Pekarcik and Ivan Ostrochovsky, won the Best Documentary Feature Award, the PAP news agency reported.
The 2023 Warsaw Film Festival screens 138 movies from 52 countries. It runs until Sunday.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, Warsaw Film Festival