The winners of the 3rd International Film Festival & Awards Macau (IFFAM) were revealed on Friday at the awards ceremony of the annual event at the Macau Cultural Centre (CCM), with South Korea’s “Clean Up” from writer-director Kwon Man-ki winning the Best Film award.
The film-fest screened 54 films this time, including 11 films competing for nine awards in the Competition Section, according to an IFFAM statement.
Additionally, six films competed in the New Competition Section, namely the “New Chinese Cinema” for the Best New Chinese-language Film of the Year, according to the statement.
According to the statement, the 11 films that competed in the Competition Section were “School’s Out”, “The Guilty”, “Clean up”, “The Good Girls”, “Ága”, “Scarborough”, “Suburban Birds”, “White Blood”, “All Good”, “Jesus” and “The Man Who Feels No Pain”.
The Jury Prize was won by “White Blood”; the Best Director award was presented to Gustav Möller for the film “The Guilty”; the Best Actor award was won by Jakob Cedergren for “The Guilty”; the Best Actress award was won by Aenne Schwarz for “All Good”; the award for Best Technical Contribution went to Kaloyan Bozhilov, cinematographer of “Ága”, according to the statement.
The award for Best Screenplay was won by Barnaby Southcombe, screenwriter of “Scarborough”, while the award for Best New Young Actor was presented to Abhimanyu Dassani for the movie “The Man Who Feels No Pain”. The Macau Audience Choice Award was won by “The Good Girls”, according to the statement.
In the New Competition Section “New Chinese Cinema”, six films competed for the prize: “Dear Ex”, “Baby”, “Xiao Mei”, “Up the Mountain”, “Fly by Night” and “The Pluto Moment”. The Best New Chinese-language Film of the Year was awarded to “Up the Mountain”.
According to the statement, about 800 guests including film directors, actors and actresses and industry professionals from around the world attended Friday’s awards ceremony at the Macau Cultural Centre.
Over 50 feature films and more than a dozen local short films from around the world were shown during the festival, which also included forums, seminars and workshops.
Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, the director of the Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) and president of the IFFAM Organising Committee, said in her speech at the awards ceremony on Friday night that “the week-long film festival has taken audiences on a visual journey across 54 extraordinary feature films and 14 local short films.”
In her speech, Senna Fernandes also said that “we are eager to see the film festival bring bright opportunities for filmmakers in Macau and from around the world.”
The festival was held from December 8 until Friday.
According to the statement, IFFAM “ambassadors” Shekhar Kapur, an Indian film director, and Xue Xiaolu, a mainland Chinese film director, as well as “talent ambassador” Aaron Kwok Fu-shing, a Hong Kong actor, were presented tokens of appreciation at the awards ceremony.
Members of the organising committee acknowledged in media interviews that there’s still a dearth of suitable venues for showing the films competing in the festival, aside from a lack of interest in the festival by local cinema-goers.
