11th Asia Pacific Screen Awards Winners

Yesterday tried to watch the awards ceremony live stream but was not interesting at all especially because it took too long to get to honoring winners and when finally -after a long piano break- started with the first award the sound went off.  So gave up.

Nevertheless checked winners and today its time to do the post.  According to official press release there are some milestones like it's the first ever APSA win for Georgia; Georgia and Russia Federation have top winner tally with three wins each, and most interesting, majority of Best Feautre awards go to female-directed films.

Notable is Warwick Thornton who became the first director to have two films win APSA Best Feature Film and to be the only Australian director to have a film win in this category.  Will say does not surprise me his top award win which believe is a major honor as was competing against extraordinary films by Samuel Maoz and Sergei Loznitsa.



The Winners

Best Feature Film: Sweet Country, Warwick Thorton, Australia

Jury Grand Prize: Aritmiya (Arrhythmia), Boris Khlebnikov, Russia

Best Youth Feature: Sekala Niskala (The Seen and Unseen),  Kamila Andini, Indonesia, Netherlands, Australia and Qatar

Best Animated Feature:  Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming, Ann Marie Fleming, Canada

Best Documentary: Last Men in Aleppo, Feras Fayyad, Syria, Denmark and Germany
Special Mention: Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web, Annie Goldson, New Zealand

Achievement in Directing: Andrey Zvyagintsev for Nelyubov (Loveless), Russia, Belgium, France and Germany

Achievement in Cinematography: Timofey Lobov and Pyotr Dukhovskoi for Meshok Bez Dna (The Bottomless Bag), Rustam Khamdamov, Russia

Best Screenplay: Mayank Tewari and Amit V. Masurkar for Newton, Amit V Masurkar, India

Best Performance by an Actress: Nata Murvanidze in Sashishi Deda (Scary Mother), Anna Urushadze, Georgia and Estonia

Best Performance by an Actor: Rajkummar Rao in Newton, Amit V Masurkar, India
Special Mention: Navid Mohammadzadeh in Bedoune Tarikh, Bedoune Emza (No Date, No Signature), Vahid Jalilvand, Iran

UNESCO  Cultural Diversity Award: Dede, Mariam Khatchvani, Georgia, Croatia, Netherlands, Qatar and UK
Special Mention: Loktak Lairembee (Lady of the Lake), Haobam Paban Kumar

Artistic Acknowledgement: Abbas Kiarostami, 24 Frames
Young Cinema Award: Nar Bagi (Pomegranate Orchard), Ilgar Najaf, Azerbaijan
FIAPF Award: Bianca Balbuena, Philippines

2017 Recipients of the MPA APSA Academy Film Fund
Chosen from 105 projects from 34 countries
Rajit Kaput for Paradise in Flames, India
Robert Connolly for Magic Beach, Australia
Guy Davidi for Senseless, Israel
Vladimer Katacharava for Nene, Georgia

To read info about each of the winning films and more, go to official site here.